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CALIFORNIA
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS
IN
AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY
Vol. 13, No. 8, pp. 259-328, 4 maps in text
November 21, 1922
ELEMENTS OF CULTURE IN NATIVE
CALIFORNIA
BY
A. L. KROEBER
CONTENTS PAGE
Introduction 260
Arts of life 260
Dress 260
Houses .- 264
The sweat-house 265
Boats : 267
Fishing 269
Bows 271
Textiles 272
Pottery -. 276
Musical instruments 277
Money.: 278
Tobacco 280
Various 281
Society 283
S Political organization 283
- The chief 285
, , -Social stratification 287
Exogamy and totemism 287
Marriage 291
f Various social habits 292
Kinship taboos 293
if Disposal of the dead 294
War 296
Religion and knowledge 299
Shamanism : 299
Cult religions 304
The mourning anniversary 309
Girls' adolescence ceremony 311
Boys' initiations 314
New year observances 315
Offerings 316
The ghost dance 316
Calendar 320
Numeration 324
MAPS, TABLES
Map 1 . Native Tribes, Groups, Districts, and Families of California in 1770, opp. 260
Map 2. Disposal of the dead 295
Map 3. Ritual cults 305
Map 4. Ghost dances 321
Table 1. The adolescence ceremony for girls 312
Table 2. Ritual numbers and methods of numeration .. 325
260 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
INTRODUCTION
These pages are intended for readers whose ethnographic interests
are at once sufficiently broad and sufficiently intense to absorb local
data presented in summarized fashion. The sketch does not endeavor
a systematic presentation of the native Californian cultures. Infor
mation that is abundant or suggestive in certain, aspects, such as its
distributional significance, is outlined and discussed. On the other
hand, subjects like magic and ritual dress on which knowledge is
irregular, miscellaneous, or complicated by intricate considerations
have been omitted. Extra-Californian comparisons have been insti
tuted rather sparingly. The purpose has been not so much to relate
California as a unit to other American cultures, as to outline the
internal relations of the primitive civilization of the area. Data are
not cited in detail. Such as are not to be found in this series of
publications and the other literature on the subject are taken from
a manuscript volume on the Indians of California prepared for and
in possession of the Bureau of American Ethnology; to the courtesy
of which institution the issue of the present discussion is due.
Map 1 shows the territory of all the ethnic groups in California.
ARTS OF LIFE
DEESS
The standard clothing of California, irrespective of cultural pro
vinces, was a short skirt or petticoat for women, and either1 nothing
at all for men or a skin folded about the hips. The breechclout is
frequently mentioned, but does not seem to have been aboriginal.
Sense of modesty among men was slightly developed. In many parts |
all men went wholly naked except when the weather enforced pro- !
tection, and among all groups old men appear to have gone bare of ]
clothing without feeling of impropriety. The women's skirt was I
everywhere in two pieces. A rather narrow apron was worn in front, j
A larger back piece extended around at least to the hips and fre
quently reached to meet the front apron. Its variable materials were
of two kinds : buckskin and plant fibers. Local supply was the chief
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 261
factor in determining choice. If the garment was of skin, its lower
half was slit into fringes. This allowed much greater freedom of
movement, but the decorative effect was also felt and used. Of vege
table fibers the most frequently used was the inner bark of trees
shredded and gathered on a cord. Grass, tule, ordinary cordage, and
wrapped thongs are also reported.
As protection against rain and wind, both sexes donned a skin
blanket. This was either thrown over the- shoulders like a cape, or
wrapped around the body, or passed over one arm and under the
other and tied or secured in front. Sea otter furs made the most
prized cloak of this type where they could be obtained. Land otter,
wild cat, deer, and almost every other kind of fur was not disdained.
The woven blanket of strips of rabbit fur or bird skin sometimes ren
dered service in this connection, although also an article of bedding.
The moccasin which prevailed over central and northwestern
California was an unsoled, single-piece, soft shoe, with one seam up
the front and another up the heel. This is the Yurok, Hupa, and
Miwok type. The front seam is puckered, but sometimes with neat
effect. The heel seam is sometimes made by a thong drawn through.
The Lassik knew a variant form, in which a single seam from the little
toe to the outer ankle sufficed. The draw-string varied : the Miwok
did without, the Lassik placed it in front of the ankle, the Yurok
followed the curious device of having the thong, self-knotted inside,
come out through the sole near its edge, and then 'lashing it over
instep and heel back on itself. This is an arrangement that would
have been distinctly unpractical on the side of wear had the moccasins
been put on daily or for long journeys. Separate soles of rawhide are
sometimes added, but old specimens are usually without, and the idea
does not seem native. The California!! moccasin is rather higher than
that of the Plains tribes, and appears not to have been worn with its
ankle portion turned down. Journeys, war, wood gathering, are the
occasions mentioned for the donning of moccasins; as well as cold
weather, when they were sometimes linod with grass. They were not
worn about the village or on ordinary ^sions.
The Modoc and Klamath rnoccai i-ds apart through Eastern
modification. It appears to have rithout stiff sole, but contains
three pieces: the sr; aching barely to the
ankle; a U-shaped inset abc e toes, prolonged into a loose tongue
above ; and a strip around the ankles, sewed to the edge of the main
piece, and coining forward as far as the tongue. The main piece has
262 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Etlm. [Vol. 13
the two seams customary in California, except that the toe seam of
course extends only to the bottom of the inset. The ankle piece can
be worn turned down or up ; the drawstring passes across the front
of the tongue.
Southern California is a region of sandals ; but the desert Cahuilla
wore a high moccasin for travel into the mountains. The hard sole
curls over the thick but soft upper, and is sewed to it from the inside
by an invisible stitch. The upper has its single seam at the back.
The front is slit down to the top of the instep, and held together by
a thong passed through the edges once or twice. The appearance of
this moccasin is Southwestern, and its structure nearly on the plan
of a civilized shoe. It reaches well up on the calf.
Moccasins and leggings in an openwork twining of tule fibers were
used in northeastern California and among the Clear lake Porno as
a device for holding a layer of soft grass against the foot.
The skin legging is rarer than the moccasin. It was made for
special use, such as travel through the snow.
In southern California, the sandal of the Southwest begins to
appear. In its most characteristic form it consists of yucca fiber,
apparently folded around a looped frame or string. The Colorado
river tribes have abandoned the use of this form of sandal if ever
they possessed it. In recent years they have worn simple rawhide
sandals ; but their very slender opportunities to hunt render it doubt
ful whether this is a type that antedates the introduction of horses
and cattle among them. The Chemehuevi are said to have worn true
moccasins. There is no clear report of any sandal north of Tehachapi.
The woman 's basketry cap, a brimless cone or frustum, is generally
considered a device intended to protect against the chafe of the
pack strap. That this interpretation is correct is shown by the fact
that in the south the cap is worn chiefly when a load is to be carried ;
whereas in the north, where custom demands the wearing of the cap
at all ordinary times, it is occasionally donned also by men when it
becomes of service to them in the handling of a dip net which is
steadied with the head. The women's cap, however, is not a generic
Calif ornian institution. In the greater part of the central area it is
unknown. Its northern and southern forms are quite distinct. Their
distribution shows them to be direct adjuncts of certain basketry
techniques. The northern cap coincides with the Xerophyllum ienax
technique and is therefore always made in overlaid twining. The
range of the southern cap appears to be identical with that of baskets
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 263
made on a foundation of Epieampes rig ens grass and is thus a coiled
product. There can be no question that tribes following other basketry
techniques possessed the ability to make caps ; but they did not do so.
It is curie s that an object of evident utilitarian origin, more or less
influenced fiv fashion, should have its distribution limited according
to the prc v alence of basketry techniques and materials.
Two minor varieties of the cap occur. Among the Chemehuevi the
somewhat peaked, diagonally-twined cap of the Great Basin Shoshon-
eans was in use. From them it had spread in some measure to the
typical southern California tribes as far as the' Diegueiio. This is
likely to have been a comparatively recent invasion, since the two
types are found side by side among the same people — a condition con
trary to prevailing precedent.
The Modoc employ but little overlay twining, and most of their
caps are wholly in their regular technique of simple twining with tule
materials. The Modoc cap averages considerably larger and is more
distinctly flat topped than that of the other northern Californians.
Inasmuch as woven caps and hats are worn all along the Pacific
coast to Alaska and through a great part of the Plateau and Great
Basin area, the two Californian types are but occurrences in a larger
continuous area, and can therefore scarcely be interpreted as having
originated quite independently. Rather is central California to be
looked upon as a tract that once had and then lost the cap, or possibly
always resisted its invasion.
The hair net worn by men clearly centers in the region of the
Kuksu religion, but its distribution seems most accurately described
as exclusive of that of the woman's cap. Thus the Kato probably
used the net and not the cap, the adjacent Wailaki reversed the habit.
There are a few overlappings, as among the Yokuts, who employed
both objects. The head net is also reported for the Shasta of Shasta
valley, but may have penetrated to them with the Kuksu elements
carried into this region in recent years by the ghost dance.
264 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Etlin. [Vol. 13
HOUSES
The houses of native California are difficult to classify except in
summary fashion. The extreme forms are well differentiated, but are
all connected by transitions. The frame house of the Yurok and
Hupa is a definite type whose affinity with the larger plank house of
the North Pacific coast is sufficiently evident. Southward and east
ward from the Yurok this house becomes smaller and more rudely
made. Bark begins to replace the split or hewn planks, and before
long a conical form made wholly of bark slabs is attained. This in
turn, if provided with a center post, need only be covered with earth
to serve as the simple prototype of the large semi-subterranean house
of the Sacramento valley. Again, the bark is often partly replaced
by poles and sticks. If these are covered with thatch, we have a
simple form of the conical brush house. This in turn also attains the
rectangular form characteristic of the perfect form of plank house,
but in other cases is made oval or round and domed, as among the
Chumash. In this event it differs from the semi-subterranean house
only in the lack of earth covering and its consequent lighter construc
tion. A further transition is afforded by the fact that the earth house
almost invariably has foliage of some kind as its topmost covering
immediately below the earth surfacing. The brush house is often
dug out a short distance. The Chumash threw the earth from the
excavation up against the walls for a few feet. The earth covered
house proper is only a little deeper and has the covering extending
all the way over.
Neither shape, skeleton structure, nor materials, therefore, offer
a satisfactory basis for the distinction of sharp types. A classification
that would be of value would have to rest on minute analysis, preceded
in many cases by more accurate information than is now available.
Among numerous tribes the old types of houses have long since gone
out of use. Among most of the remainder they have been at least
partly modified, and the majority of early descriptions are too sum
mary to be of great service.
Nor does a consideration of the distribution of house forms hold
much present promise of fuller understanding. The earth covered
house was made from the Modoc, Achomawi, and Yuki south to the
Miwok; then again in the extreme part of southern California. The
bark house is found chiefly among mountain tribes, but no very close
correlation with topography appears. The well fashioned plank house
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 265
is definitely to be associated with the northwestern culture. The earth
lodge of the Sacramento valley region is evidently connected with the
Kuksu religion on one side, since the southward limits of distribution
of the two appear to coincide. Northward, however, this form of
house extends considerably beyond the cult. The southern earth
lodge probably has the center of its distribution among the Colorant
river tribes. It appears to have penetrated somewhat farther west
than the religious influences emanating from this district.
From- the Chumash to the southern valley Yokuts, communal
houses were in use. Yet the larger specimens of the earth lodges of
the Sacramento valley district must also have sheltered more people
than we reckon to a family ; and the same is true of the thatched houses
of the Porno.
As regards affiliations outside of California, there is the same
uncertainty. Are we to reckon the semi-subterranean house of interior
British Columbia as one in type with the Navaho hogan simply because
the two are roofed with earth ; or is the hogan essentially of the type
of the plains tepee by reason of its conical shape and tripod founda
tion? Until such broader problems are answered, it would scarcely
be sound to attempt a definitive classification of the dwellings of
aboriginal California.
The separate hut for the woman in her periodical illness seems
to be a northern Californian institution. Information is irregular,
but the groups who affirm that they formerly erected such structures
are the Yurok, Karok, Hupa ; probably the other northwestern tribes ;
the Shasta and Modoc; the northern Maidu; and apparently the
Porno. The Yuki and Sinkyone deny the practice, but their geo
graphical situation renders unconfirmed negative statements somewhat
doubtful. South of the Golden Gate, there is no clear reference to
separate huts for women except among the Luiseno, and the Yokuts
specifically state that they did not build them.
(
THE SWEAT-HOUSE
The sweat-house is a typical Californian institution if there is
any ; yet it was not in universal use. The Colorado river tribes lacked
it or any substitute ; and a want of reference to the structure among
a series of Shonhonean desert tribes, such as the Chemehuevi and the
eastern Mono, indicates that these must perhaps be joined to the agri
cultural Yumans in this respect; although an earth sweat-house is
reported from the Panamint. The non-use of the sweat-house among
266 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
the Yuma and Mohave appears to be of rather weighty historical
significance, since on their eastern side the edifice was made by the
nomadic tribes of the Southwest, and a related type — the kiva or
estufa — is important among the Pueblos.
The Californian sweat-house is an institution of daily, not occa
sional, service. It serves a habit, not a medicinal treatment ; it
enters into ceremony indirectly rather than specifically as a means
of purification. It is the assembly of the men, and often their sleeping
quarters. It thus comes to fulfill many of the functions of a club ;
but is not to be construed as such, since ownership or kinship or
friendship, not membership, determines admission; and there is no
act of initiation.
In line with these characteristics, the California sweathouse was
a structure, not a few boughs over, which a blanket was thrown before
entry. It was earth-covered; except in the northwest, where an
abundance of planks roofed a deep pit. In either case a substantial
construction was requisite. A center post was often set up : logs and
poles at any rate had to be employed.
Warmth was produced directly by fire, never by steam generated
by heated stones. While the smoke was densest, the inmates lay close
to the floor. Women were never admitted, except here and there on
special ceremonial occasions, when sweating became a subsidiary
feature or was wholly omitted.
In general, the sweat-house was somewhat smaller than the living
house. This holds of the northwestern tribes, the Yokuts, and the
groups of southern California. In the region of the Kuksu religion,
the dance house or ceremonial assembly chamber — built much like the
sweat-house elsewhere but on a far ampler scale — has come to be
known as "sweat-house" among both Indians and whites. It is not
likely that this large structure ever really replaced the true sweat-
house in and about the Sacramento valley. The two may generally
have existed side by side, as is known to have been the case among
the Porno and Patwin, but the smaller edifice have lost its proper
identity in description under the unfortunate looseness of nomen
clature; much as among tribes like the Yana, the Indians now speak
of "sweat-houses" inhabited by families. Some careful because
belated inquiries remain to be made to dispel the uncertainty in this
matter. It would seem that in the Sacramento valley region there
were three sizes of earth-covered structures : the large dance house,
the moderately spaced living house, and the small sweat-house proper.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 267
Iii extreme northeastern California the Plains form of sweat-
house has obtained a foothold : a small dome of willows covered with
mats, large enough for a few men to sit up in, heated by steam. This
is established for the Modoc, while less complete descriptions suggest
the same for the Shasta, Achomawi, and Washo; but among at least
some of these groups the steam sweat-house is of modern introduction.
It is notable that there is no indication of any fusion or hybridiza
tion of the Calif ornian and the Eastern types of sweat-house even
in the region where they border. This condition is typical of cultural
phenomena in native America, and probaoly throughout the world,
as soon as they are viewed distributionally rather than in their
developmental sequence. Civilizations shade by endless transitions.
Their elements wander randomly, as it seems, with little reference
to the circumstances of their origin. But analogous or logically
equivalent elements exclude each other far more often than they
intergrade.
BOATS
Native California used two types of boat — the wooden canoe and
the tule balsa, a shaped raft of rushes. Their use tends to be exclusive
without becoming fully so. Their distribution is determined by cul
tural more than by physiographic factors.
The northwestern canoe was employed on Humboldt bay and
along the open, rocky coast to the north, but its shape as well as range
indicate it to have been devised for river use. It was dug out of
half a redwood log, was square ended, round bottomed, of heavy pro
portions, but nicely finished with recurved gunwales and carved-out
seat. A similar if not identical boat was used on the southern Oregon
coast beyond the range of the redwood tree. The southern limit is
marked by Cape Mendocino and the navigable waters of Eel river.
Inland, the Karok and Hupa regularly used canoes of Yurok manu
facture, and occasional examples were sold as far upstream as the
Shasta.
The southern California canoe was a seagoing vessel, indispensable
to the Shoshonean and Chumash islanders of the Santa Barbara group,
and considerably employed also by the mainlanders of the shore from
Point Concepcion and probably San Luis Obispo as far south as San
Diego. It was usually of lashed planks, either because solid timber
for dugouts was scant, or because dexterity in woodworking rendered
268 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
a carpentered construction less laborious. A dugout form seems also
to have been known, and perhaps prevailed among the manually
clumsier tribes toward San Diego. A double-bladed paddle was used.
The southern California canoe was purely maritime. There were no
navigable rivers, and on the few sheltered bays and lagoons the balsa
was sufficient and generally employed. The size of this canoe was
not great, the beam probably narrow, and the construction light ; but
the sea is normally calm in southern California and one side of the
islands almost always sheltered.
A third type of canoe had a limited distribution in favorable
localities in northern California, ranging about as far as overlay
twining, and evidently formed part of the technological culture char
acteristic of this region. A historical community of origin with the
northwestern redwood canoe is indubitable, but it is less clear whether
the northeastern canoe represents the original type from which the
northwestern developed as a specialization, or whether the latter is
the result of coastal influences from the north, and the northeastern
form a deteriorated marginal extension. This northeastern canoe was
. of pine or cedar or fir, burned and chopped out, narrow of beam, with-
\ \
out definite shape. It was made by the Shasta, Modoc, Atsugewi,
Achomawi, and northernmost Maidu.
The balsa or rush raft had a nearly universal distribution, so far
as drainage conditions permitted ; the only groups that wholly rejected
it in favor of the canoe being the Chumash and the northwestern
tribes. It is reported from the Modoc, Achomawi, Northern Paiute,
Wintun, Maidu, Porno, Costanoans, Yokuts, Tubatulabal, Luiseno,
Diegueno, and Colorado river tribes. For river crossing, a bundle
or group of bundles of tules sufficed. On large lakes and bays well-
shaped vessels, with pointed and elevated prow and raised sides, were
often navigated with paddles. The balsa does not appear to have
been in use north of California, but it was known in Mexico, and
probably has a continuous distribution, except for gaps due to negative
environment, into South America.
The balsa was most often poled; but in the deep waters of San
Francisco bay the Costanoans propelled it with the same double-
bladed paddle that was used with the canoe of the coast and archi
pelago of southern California, whence the less skilful northerners may
be assumed to have derived the implement. The double paddle is
extremely rare in America; like the "Mediterranean" type of arrow
release, it appears to have been recorded only from the eastern
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 269
Eskimo. The Porno of Clear lake used a single paddle with short
broad blade. The canoe paddle of the northwestern tribes is long, nar
row, and heavy, having to serve both as pole and as oar; that of the
Klamath and Modoc, whose lake waters were currentless, is of more
normal shape. Whether or not the southerners employed the one-
bladed paddle in addition to the double-ended one, does not seem to
be known.
The occurrence of the double-bladed paddle militates against the
supposition that the Chumash plank canoe might be of Oceanic origin.
It would be strange if the boat — minus the ou-trigger — could be derived
from the central Pacific, its paddle from the Arctic. Both look like
local inventions.
Except for Drake's reference to canoes among the Coast Miwok —
perhaps to be understood as balsas — there is no evidence that any form
of boat was in use on the ocean from the Golden Gate to Cape Mendo-
cino. A few logs were occasionally lashed into a rude raft when seal
or mussel rocks were to be visited.
A number of interior groups ferried goods, children, and perhaps
even women across swollen streams in large baskets or — in the south
—pots. Swimming men propelled and guarded the little vessels. This
custom is established for the Yuki, Yokuts, and Mohave, and was no
doubt participated in by other tribes.
FISHING
In fresh water and still bays, fish are more successfully taken by
rude people with nets or weirs or poison than by line. Fish hooks are
therefore employed only occasionally. This is the case in California.
There was probably no group that was ignorant of the fish hook,
but one hears little of its use. The one exception was on the southern
coast, where deep water appears to have restricted the use of nets,*
The prevalent hook in this region was a single curved piece cut out
of haliotis shell. Elsewhere the hook was in use chiefly for fishing in
the larger lakes, and in the higher mountains where trout were taken.
It consisted most commonly of a wooden shank with a pointed bone
lashed backward on it at an angle of 45 degrees or less. Sometimes
two such bones projected on opposite sides. The gorget, a straight
bone sharpened on both ends and suspended from a string in its
middle, is reported from the Modoc, but is likely to have had a wider
distribution.
270 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Etlm. [Vol. 13
The harpoon was probably known to every group in California
whose territory contained sufficient bodies of water. The Colorado
river tribes provide the only exception : the stream is too murky for the
harpoon. The type of implement is everywhere substantially identi
cal. The shaft, being intended for thrusting and not throwing, is long
and slender. The-foreshaft is usually double, one prong being slightly
longer than the other, presumably because the stroke is most commonly
delivered at an angle to the bottom. The toggle heads are small, of
bone and wood tightly wrapped with string and pitched. The socket
is most frequently in or near the end. The string leaving the head
at or near the middle, the socket end serves as a barb. This rather
rude device is sufficient because the harpoon is rarely employed for
game larger than a salmon. The lines are short and fastened to the
spear.
A heavier harpoon which was perhaps hurled was used by the
northwestern coast tribes for taking -sea lions. Only the heads have
been preserved. These are of bone or antler and possess a true barb
as well as socket.
A single example of a Chumash sealing harpoon has been pre
served. This has a detachable foreshaft of wood, set in a socket of
the main shaft, and tipped with a non-detachable flint blade and a
bone barb that is lashed and asphalted on immediately behind the
blade.
There is one record of the spear thrower: also a specimen from
the Chumash. This is of wood and is remarkable for its excessively
short, broad, and unwieldy shape. It is probably authentic, but its
entire uniqueness renders caution necessary in drawing inferences
from this solitary example.
The seine for surrounding fish, the stretched gill net, and the dip
net were known to all the Californians, although many groups had
occasion to use only certain varieties. The form and size of the
dip net of course differed according as it was used in large or small
streams, in the surf or in standing waters. The two commonest forms
of frame were a semicircular hoop bisected by the handle, and two
long diverging poles crossed and braced in the angle. A kite-shaped
frame was sometimes employed for scooping. Nets without poles had
floats of wood or tule stems. The sinkers were grooved or nicked
stones, the commonest type of all being a flat beach pebble notched on
opposite edges to prevent the string slipping. Perforated stones are
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 271
known to have been used as net sinkers only in northwestern Califor
nia and even there they occur by the side of the grooved variety.
They are usually distinguishable without difficulty from the perforated
stone of southern and central California which served as a digging
stick weight, by the fact that their perforation is normally not in the
middle. The northwesterners also availed themselves of naturally
perforated stones.
Fish poison was fed into small streams and pools by a number of
tribes : the Porno, Yokuts, and Luiseno are specified, which indicates
that the practice was widely spread. Buckeyes and soaproot (Chloro-
galum) as well as other plants were employed.
BOWS
The bow was self, long, and narrow in the south, sinew-backed,
somewhat shorter, thin, and broad in northern and central Califor
nia. Of course light unbacked bows were used for small game and
by boys everywhere. The material varied locally. In. the northwest,
the bow was of yew and shorter and flatter than anywhere else ; the
wood was pared down to little greater thickness than the sinew, the
edge was sharp, and the grip much pinched. Good bows of course
quickly went out of use before firearms, so that few examples have
been preserved anywhere except low-grade modern pieces intended
for birds and rabbits. But sinew backing is reported southward to
the Yokuts and Panamint, so that the Tehachapi range may be set
as the limit. The Yokuts name of the Kitanemuk meant "large
bows." This group therefore is likely to have used the southern self
bow. On the other hand, a specimen attributed to the Chumash is
sinew-backed, thong-wound in the middle, and has a three-ply sinew
cord. As the piece is narrower than the northern bows and the wood
does not seem to be yew, the attribution is probably correct.
The arrow was normally two-pieced, its head most frequently of
obsidian, which works finer and smaller as well as sharper than flint.
The butt end of the point was frequently notched for a sinew lashing.
The foreshaft was generally set into the main shaft. For small game
shot at close range one-piece arrows frequently sufficed : the stone
head was also omitted, or replaced by a blunted wooden point. Cane
was used as main shaft wherever it was available, but nowhere
exclusively. From the Yokuts south to the Yuma the typical fighting
arrow was a simple wooden shaft without head, quantity rather than
272 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
effectiveness of ammunition appearing the desideratum. The same
tribes, however, often tipped their cane deer-arrows with stone.
The arrow release has been described for but three groups. None
of these holds agrees, and two are virtually new for America. The
Maidu release is the primary one, the Yahi a modification of the
Mongolian, the Luiseno the pure Mediterranean, hitherto attributed
in the new world only to the Eskimo. This remarkable variety in
detail is 'characteristic of California,
The arrow was bent straight in a hole cut through a slab of wood,
and polished with Eqivisetum or in two grooved pieces of sandstone
in the north. The southern straightener and polisher is determined
by the cane arrow: a transversely grooved rectangle of steatite set
by the fire. This Southwestern form extends north at least to the
Yokuts; the Maidu possessed it in somewhat aberrant form.
TEXTILES
Basket^ is unquestionably the most developed art in California,
so that it is of interest that the principle which chiefly emerges in
connection with the art is that its growth has been in the form of
what ethnologists are wont to name "complexes." That is to say,
materials, processes, forms, and uses which abstractly considered bear
no intrinsic relation to one another, or only a slight relation, are in
fact bound up in a unit. A series of tribes employs the same forms,
substances, and techniques; when a group is reached which abandons
one of these factors, it abandons most or all of them, and follows a
characteristically different art.
This is particularly clear of the basketry of northernmost Califor
nia. At first sight this art seems to be distinguished chiefly by the
outstanding fact that it knows no coiling processes. Its southern
line of demarcation runs between the Sinkyone and Kato, the Wailaki
and Yuki, through Wintun and Yana territory at points that have
not been determined with certainty, and between the Achomawi (or
more strictly the Atsugewi) and the Maidu. Northward it extends
far into Oregon west of the Cascades. The Klamath and Modoc do
not adhere to it, although their industry is a related one.
Further examination reveals a considerable number of other traits
that are universally followed by the tribes in the region in question.
Wicker and checker work, which have no connection with coiling, are
also not made. Of the numerous varieties of twining, the plain weave
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 273
is substantially the only one employed, with some use of subsidiary
strengthening in narrow belts of three-strand twining. The diagonal
twine is known, but practiced only sporadically. Decoration is wholly
in overlay twining, each weft strand being faced with a colored one.
The materials of this basketry are hazel shoots for warp, conifer roots
for weft, and Xerophyllum, Adiantum, and alder-dyed Woodwardia
for white, black, and red patterns respectively. All these plants
appear to grow some distance south of the range of this basketry. At
least in some places to the south they are undoubtedly sufficiently
abundant to serve as materials. The limit of distribution of the art
can therefore not be ascribed to botanical causes. Similarly, there
is no easily seen reason why people should stop wearing basketry caps
and pounding acorns in a basketry hopper because their materials or
technique have become different. That they do, evidences the strength
of this particular complex.
In southern California a definite type of basket ware is adhered
to with nearly equal rigidity. The typical technique here is codling,
normally 011 a foundation of straws of Epicampes grass. The sewing
material is sumac or Juncus. Twined ware is subsidiary, is roughly
done, and is made wholly in Juncus — a material that, used alone,
forbids any considerable degree of finish. Here again the basketry
cap and the mortar hopper appear but are limited toward the north
by the range of the technique.
From southern California proper this basketry has penetrated to
the southerly Yokuts and the adjacent Shoshonean tribes. Chumash
ware also belongs to the same type, although it often substitutes
Juncus for the Epicampes grass and sometimes uses willow. Both
the Chumash and the Yokuts and Shoshoneans in and north of the
Tehachapi mountains have developed one characteristic form not
found in southern California proper : the shouldered basket with con
stricted neck. This is represented in the south by a simpler form, a
small globular basket. The extreme development of the "bottle
neck" type is found among the Yokuts, Kawaiisu, and Tiibatulabal.
The Chumash on the one side, and the willow-using Chemehuevi on
the other, round the shoulders of these vessels so as to show a partial
transition to the southern California prototype.
The Colorado river tribes slight basketry to a very unusual degree.
They make a few rude trays and fish traps. The majority of their
baskets they seem always to have acquired in trade from their neigh
bors. Their neglect of the art recalls its similar low condition among
274 University of California Publications in Am. Aroli. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
the Pueblos, but is even more pronounced. Pottery making and agri
culture seem to be the influences most largely responsible.
Central California from the Yuki and Maidu to the Yokuts is an
area in which coiling and twining occur side by side. There are prob
ably more twined baskets made, but they are manufactured for
rougher usage and more often undecorated. Show pieces are usually
coiled. The characteristic technique is therefore perhaps coiling, but
the two processes nearly balance. The materials are not so uniform
as in the north or south. The most characteristic plant is perhaps the
redbud, Cercis occidentalis, which furnishes the red and often the
white surface of coiled vessels and is used in twining also. The most
common techniques are coiling with triple foundation and plain twin
ing. Diagonal twining is however more or less followed, and lattice
twining, single-rod coiling, and wicker work all have at least a local
distribution. Twining with overlay is never practiced. Forms are
variable, but not to any notable extent. Oval baskets are made in the
Porno region, and occasionally elsewhere, but there is no shape of so
pronounced a character as the southern Yokuts bottleneck.
A number of local basketry arts have grown in central California
on this generic foundation. The most complicated of these is that
of the Porno and their immediate neighbors, who have developed
feather-covering, lattice-twining, checker-work, single-rod coiling, the
mortar hopper, and several other specializations. It may be added
that the Porno appear to be the only central California!! group that
habitually make twined baskets with patterns.
Another definite center of development includes the Washo and in
some measure the Miwok. Both of these groups practice single-rod
coiling and have evolved a distinctive style of ornamentation char
acterized by a certain lightness of decorative touch. This ware, how
ever, shades off to the south into Yokuts basketry with its southern
California affiliations, and to the north into Maidu ware.
The latter in its pure form is readily distinguished from Miwok
as well as Porno basketry, but presents few positive peculiarities.
Costanoan and Salinan baskets perished so completely that no
very definite idea of them can be formed. It is unlikely that any very
marked local type prevailed in this region, and yet there are almost
certain to have been some peculiarities.
The Yuki, wedged in between the Porno and tribes that followed
the northern California twining, make a coiled ware which with all
its simplicity cannot be confounded with that of any other group in
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 27o
California; this in spite of the general lack of advancement which
pervades their culture.
It thus appears that we may infer that a single style and type
underlies the basketry of the whole of central California; that this
has undergone numerous local diversifications due only in part to
the materials available, and extending on the other hand into its
purely decorative aspects ; and that the most active and proficient of
these local superstructures was that for which the Porno were respon
sible, their creation, however, differing only in degree from those
which resulted from analogous but less active impulses elsewhere. In
central California, therefore, a basic basketry complex is less rigidly
developed, or preserved, than in either the north or the south. The
flora being substantially uniform through central California, differ
ences in the use of materials are in themselves significant of the
incipient or superficial diversifications of the art.
The Modoc constitute a sub-type within the area of twining. They
overlay chiefly when they use Xerophyllum or quills, it would seem,
and the majority of their baskets, which are composed of tule fibers
of several shades, are- in plain twining. But the shapes and patterns
of their ware have clearly been developed under the influences that
guide the art of the overlaying tribes; and the cap and hopper occur
among them.
It is difficult to decide whether the Modoc art is to be interpreted
as a form of the primitive style on which the modern overlaying com
plex is based, or as a readaptation of the latter to a new and widely
useful material. The question can scarcely be answered without full
consideration of the basketry of all Oregon.
Cloth is unknown in aboriginal California. Rush mats are twined
like baskets or sewn. The nearest approach to a loom is a pair of
upright sticks on which a long cord of rabbit fur is wound back and
forth to be made into a blanket by the intertwining of a weft of the
same material, or of two cords. The Maidu and southern Californians,
and therefore probably other tribes also, made similar blankets of
feather cords or strips of duck skin. The rabbit skin blanket has of
course a wide distribution outside of California ; that of bird skins
may have been devised locally.
276 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
POTTERY
The distribution of pottery in California reveals this art as surely
due to Southwestern influences. It is practiced by the Yuma, Mohave,
and other Colorado river tribes ; sporadically by the Chemehuevi ; by
the Diegueno, Luiseiio, Cupeno, Serrano, and Cahuilla; probably not
by the Gabrielino ; with the Juaneilo doubtful. A second area, in which
cruder pottery is made, lies to the north, apparently disconnected from
the southern California one. In this district live the southern and
perhaps central Yokuts, the Tiibatulabal, and the Western Mono. This
ware seems to be pieced with the fingers ; it is irregular, undecorated,
and the skill to construct vessels of any size was wanting. The south
ern Californians tempered with crushed rock, employed a clay that
baked dull reddish, laid it on in thin spiral coils, and smoothed it
between a wooden paddle and a pebble. They never corrugated, and
no slipped ware has been found in the region; but there was some
variety of forms — bowls, jars, pots, oval plates, short handled spoons,
asymmetrical and multiple-mouthed jars, pipes — executed in a con
siderable range of sizes. Designs were solely in yellow ochre, and
frequently omitted. They consisted chiefly of patterns of angular
lines, with or without the corners filled in. Curves, solidly painted
areas, and semi-realistic figures were rarely attempted. The ware was
light, brittle, and porous.
The art during the last generation has been best preserved among
the Mohave, and seems at all times to have attained greatest develop
ment on the Colorado river. But the coast tribes may have been sub
stantial equals before they came under Caucasian influence, except
that they decorated less. An affinity with ancient Pima and Seri ware
is unmistakable; but it is far from attaining identity. There is no
direct or specific resemblance to any present or ancient Pueblo pottery.
This argues a local origination under outside influence, not an impor
tation of the art as such ; at any rate not from the true Pueblo area.
Sonora is rather indicated as the source of stimulation. Potsherds
indistinguishable from the modern ware occur in ancient sites on the
Diegueno coast. Whether or not they extend to the earlier deposits
remains to be ascertained; but they testify that the art is not an
entirely recent one. Pottery was not established in California as a
mere adjunct of agriculture, its distribution being considerably greater.
1922 J Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 277
Pottery, then, must be reckoned as historically in a class with the
religious institutions of southern California : a local growth, due to an
ultimate stimulus from the Southwest.
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
The rattle is of three kinds in the greater part of California : the
split clap stick for dancing, the gravel-filled cocoon bunch for shaman-
istic practices, the bundle of deer hoofs for the adolescent girl. South
of Tehachapi these are generally replaced by a single form, whose
material varies between turtle shell and gourd according to region.
The northwest does not use rattles except in the adolescence ceremony ;
in which some tribes, such as the Hupa and Sinkyone, employ a modi
fication of the clap stick, the Karok, Tolowa, and others the more
general deer hoofs. The latter implement is known as far south as
the Luiseilo but seems to be associated with hunting or mourning
ceremonies at this end of the state. The clap stick penetrated to the
Gabrielino.
The notched scraper or musical rasp has been reported only from
the Salmans.
California is a drumless region, except in the 'area of the Kuksu
cult. There a foot drum, a segment of a large cylinder of wood, is
set at the back of the dance house, and held very sacred. Various
substitutes exist: the Yurok beat a board with a paddle, the Maidu
strike or rub baskets, the Mohave do the same before a resounding
jar. But these devices accompany gambling or shamans' or narrative
songs: none of the substitutes replace dance drums.
Whistles of bone or cane are employed far more frequently in
dances than the drum — by practically all tribes, in fact, although of
course in quite different connections.
The bull-roarer has been reported from several scattered tribes.
As might be expected, its use is religious, but its specific service is
not well known and may have varied. To the Luisefio it was a
summons. It was not used by the northwestern nations.
The only true musical instrument in our sense is the flute, an open,
reedless tube, blown across the edge of one end. Almost always it
has four holes, often more or less grouped in two pairs, and is innocent
of any definite scale. It is played for self-recreation and courtship.
The Mohave alone know a flageolet.
278 University of California Publications in Am. Areh. and Etlin. [Vol. 13
The musical or resonant bow, a sort of Jew's harp, the only stringed
instrument of California, has been recorded among the Porno, Maidu,
Yokuts, and Dieguefio, and no doubt had a wider distribution. It was
tapped as a restful amusement, and sometimes in converse with the
spirits.
It is remarkable, although abundantly paralleled among other
Indians, that the only two instruments capable of producing a melody
were not used ceremonially. The cause may be their imperfection.
The dance was based on song, which an instrument of rhythm could
enrich, but with which a mechanically but crudely produced melody
would have clashed.
It is also a curious fact that the comparatively superior civiliza
tion of the northwestern tribes was the one that wholly lacked drum,
bull-roarer, and musical bow and made minimal employ of rattles.
MONEY
Two forms of money prevailed in California, the dentalium shell,
imported from the far north; and the clam shell disk bead. Among
the strictly northwestern tribes dentalia were alone standard. In a
belt stretching across the remainder of the northern end of the state,
and limited very nearly, to the south, by the line that marks the end
of the range of overlay twined basketry, dentalia and disks were used
side by side.
Beyond, to the southern end of the state, dentalia were so sporadic
as to be no longer reckoned as money, and the clam money was the
medium of valuation. It had two sources of supply. On Bodega bay,
perhaps also at a few other points, the resident Coast Miwok and
neighboring Porno gathered the shell Saxidomus aratus or gracilis.
From Morro bay near San Luis Obispo to San Diego there occurs
another large clam, Tivela or Pachydesma crassatellaides. Both of
these were broken, the pieces roughly shaped, bored, strung, and then
rounded and polished on a sandstone slab. The disks were from a
third of an inch to an inch in diameter, and from a quarter to a
third of an inch thick, and varied in value according to size, thick
ness, polish, and age. The Porno supplied the north; southern and
central California used Pachydesma beads. The Southern Maidu are
said to have had the latter, which fact, on account of their remoteness
from the supply, may account for the higher value of the currency
among them than with the Yokuts. But the Porno Saxidomus bead
is likely also to have reached the Maidu.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 279
From the Yokuts and Salmans south, money was measured on
the circumference of the hand. The exact distance traversed by the
string varied somewhat according to tribe; the value in our terms
appears to have fluctuated locally to a greater degree. The Porno,
\Vintim, and Maidu seem not to have known the hand scale. They
measured their strings in the rough by stretching them out, and appear
to have counted the beads when they wished accuracy.
Associated with the two clam moneys were two kinds of valuables,
both in cylindrical form. The northern was of magnesite, obtained
in or near southeastern Porno territory. This was polished and on
baking took on a tawny or reddish hue, often variegated. These stone
cylinders traveled as far as the Yuki and the Miwok. From the south
came similar but longer and slenderer pieces of shell, white to violet
in color, made sometimes of the columella of univalves, sometimes out
of the hinge of a large rock oyster or rock clam, probably H inn-it es
gigantcus. The bivalve cylinders took the finer grain and seem to
have been preferred. Among the Chumash, such pieces must have
been fairly common, to judge from finds in graves. To the inland
Yokuts and Miwok they were excessively valuable. Both the mag
nesite and the shell cylinders were perforated longitudinally, and
often constituted the center piece of a fine string of beads; but, how
ever displayed, they were too precious to be properly classifiable as
ornaments. At the same time their individual variability in size
and quality, and consequently in value, was too great to allow them
to be reckoned as ordinary money. The3T may be ranked on the whole
with the obsidian blades of northwestern California, as an equivalent
of precious stones among ourselves.
The small univalve Olivclla biplieata and probably other species
of the same genus were used nearly everywhere in the state. In the
north, they were strung whole ; in central and southern California,
frequently broken up and rolled into thin, slightly concave disks, as
by the Southwestern Indians of today. Neither form had much value.
The olivella disks are far more common in graves than clam disks, as
if a change of custom had taken place from the prehistoric to the
historic period. But a more likely explanation is that the olivellas
accompanied the corpse precisely because they were less valuable, the
clam currency either being saved for inheritance, or, if offered,
destroyed by fire in the great mourning anniversary.
Haliotis was much used in necklaces, ear ornaments, and the like,
and among tribes remote from the sea commanded a considerable
price ; but it was nowhere standardized into currency.
280 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
TOBACCO
Tobacco, of two or more species of Nicotiatia, was smoked every
where, but -by the Yokuts, Tiibatulabal, Kitanemuk, and Costanoans
it was also mixed with shell lime and eaten.
The plant was grown by the northwestern groups such as the
Yurok and Hupa, and apparently by the Wintun and Maidu. This
limited agriculture, restricted to the people of a rather small area
remote from tribes with farming customs, is curious. The Hupa and
Yurok are afraid of wild tobacco as liable to have sprung from a
grave ; but it is as likely that the cultivation produced this unreason
able fear by rendering the use of the natural product unnecessary,
as that the superstition was the impetus to the cultivation.
Tobacco was offered religiously by the Yurok, the Hupa, the Yahi,
the Yokuts, and presumably by most or all other tribes; but exact
data are lacking.
The pipe is found everywhere, and with insignificant exceptions
is tubular. In the northwest, it averages about six inches long, and
is of hard wood scraped somewhat concave in profile, the bowl lined
with inset soapstone. In the region about the Porno, the pipe is
longer, the bowl end abruptly thickened to two or three inches, the
stem slender. This bulb-ended pipe and the bulb-ended pestle have
nearly the same distribution and may have influenced one another.
In the Sierra Nevada, the pipe runs to only three or four inches, and
tapers somewhat to the mouth end. The Chumash pipe has been pre
served in its stone exemplars. These normally resemble the Sierra
type, but are .often longer, normally thicker, and more frequently
contain a brief mouthpiece of bone. Ceremonial specimens are some
times of obtuse angular shape. The pottery making tribes of the
south use clay pipes most commonly. These are short, with shouldered
bowl end. In all the region from the Yokuts south, in other words
wherever the plant is available, a simple length of cane frequently
replaces the worked pipe ; and among all tribes shamans have all-stone
pieces at times. The Modoc pipe is essentially Eastern : a stone head
set on a wooden stem. The head is variable, as if it were a new and
not yet established form : a tube, an L, intermediate forms, or a disk.
The Californians were light smokers, rarely passionate. They con
sumed smaller quantities of tobacco than most Eastern tribes and did
not dilute it with bark. Smoking was of little formal social con-
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 281
sequence, and indulged in chiefly at bedtime in the sweat-house. The
available species of Nicotiana were pungent and powerful in physio
logical effect, and quickly produced dizziness and sleep.
VARIOUS
The ax and the stone celt are foreign to aboriginal California. The
substitute is the wedge or chisel of antler — among the Chumash of
whale 's bone — driven by a stone. This maul is shaped only in extreme
northern California.
The commonest string materials are the bark or outer fitters of
dogbane or Indian hemp, Apocynum cannabinum; and milkweed,
Asclepias. From these, fine cords and heavy ropes' are spun by hand.
Nettle string is reported from two groups as distant as the Modoct-
and the Luisejjo. Other tribes are likely to have used it also as a
subsidiary material. In -title- northwest, from the Tolowa to the Coast
Yuki, and inland at least to the Shasta, Indian hemp and milkweed
are superseded by a small species of iris — I. macrosiphon — from each
leaf of which two thin, tough, silky fibers are scraped out. The manu
facture is tedious, but results in an unusually fine, hard, and even
string. In the southern desert, yucca fibers yield a coarse stiff cord- '*
age, and the reed — Phragmites — is also said to be used. Barks of
various kinds, mostly from unidentified species, are employed for
wrappings and lashings by many tribes, and grapevine is a convenient
tying material for large objects when special pliability is not required.
Practicalhr all Californian cordage, of whatever weight, was two-ply
before Caucasian contact became influential.
The carrying net is essentially southern so far as California is J
concerned, but connects geographically as well as in type with a net
used by the Shoshonean women of the Great Basin. It was in use
among all the southern Californians except those of the Colorado river
and possibly the Chemehuevi, and extended north among the Yokuts.
The shape of the utensil is that of a small hammock of large mesh.
One end terminates in a heavy cord, the other in a loop. A varying
type occurs in an isolated region to the north among the Porno and l
Yuki. Here the ends of the net are carried into a continuous head
band. This arrangement does not permit of contraction or expansion
to accommodate the load as in the south. The net has also been men
tioned for the Costanoans, but its type there remains unknown. It is
possible that these people served as transmitters of the idea from the
282 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
south to the Porno. A curious device is reported from the Maidu.
The pack strap, when not of skin, is braided or more probably woven.
Through its larger central portion the warp threads run free without
weft. This arrangement allows them to be spread out and to enfold
a small or light load somewhat in the fashion of a net.
The earning frame of the Southwest has no analogy in California
except on the Colorado river. Here two looped sticks are crossed and
their four lengths connected with light cordage. Except for the dis
parity between the frame and the shell of the covering, this type
would pass as a basketry form, and at bottom it appears to be such.
The ordinary openwork conical carrying basket of central and north-
\^ern California is occasionally strengthened by the lashing in of four
heavier rods. In the northeastern corner of the state, where exterior
influences from eastern cultures are recognizable, the carrier is some
times of hide fastened to a frame of four sticks.
The storage of acorns or corresponding food supplies is provided
for in three ways" in California. All the southern tribes construct a
large receptacle of twigs irregularly interlaced like a bird's nest.
This is sometimes made with a bottom, sometimes set on a bed of twigs
and covered in the same way. The more arid the climate, the less
does construction matter. Mountain tribes make the receptacle with
bottom and lid and small mouth. In the open desert the chief function
of the granary is to hold the food together and it becomes little else
than a short section of hollow cylinder. Nowhere is there any recog
nizable technique. The diameter is from two to six feet. The setting
is always outdoors, sometimes on a platform, often on bare rocks,
and occasionally on the ground. The Chumash did not use this type
of receptacle.
In central California a cache or granary is used which can also
not be described as a true basket. It differs from the southern form
in usually being smaller in diameter but higher, in being constructed
of finer and softer materials, and in depending more or less directly
in its structure on a series of posts which at the same time elevate
it from the ground. This is the granary of the tribes in the Sierra
Nevada, used by the Wintun, Maidu, Miwok, and Yokuts, and in
somewhat modified form — a mat of sticks covered with thatch — by the
Western or mountain Mono. It has penetrated also to those of the
Porno of Lake county who are in direct communication with the
Wintun.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 283
Iii the remainder of California, both north and south, large bas
kets — their type of course determined by the prevailing style of
basketry — are set indoors or perhaps occasionally in caves or rock
recesses.
The flat spoon or paddle for stirring gruel is widely spread, but
far from universal. It has been found among all the northwestern
tribes, the Achomawi, Shasta, Porno, AVappo, Northern Miwok, Washo,
and Diegueiio. The Yokuts and Southern Miwok, at times the Washo,
use instead a looped stick, which is also convenient for handling hot
cooking stones. The Colorado river tribes, who stew* more civilized
messes of corn, beans, or fish in pots, tie three rods together for a
stirrer. The Maidu alone are said to have done without an implement.
SOCIETY
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
Tribes did not exist in California in the sense in which the word
is properly applicable to the greater part of the North American con
tinent. When the term is used it must therefore be understood as
synonymous with "ethnic group" rather than as denoting political
unity.
The marginal Mohave and the Yuma are the only Californian
groups comparable to what are generally understood as ''tribes" in
the central and eastern United States : namely, a fairly coherent body
of from five hundred to five thousand souls — usually averaging not
far from two thousand; speaking in almost all cases a distinctive
dialect or at least sub-dialect; with a political organization of the
loosest, perhaps; but nevertheless possessed of a considerable senti
ment of solidarity as against all other bodies, sufficient ordinarily to
lead them to act as a unit. The uniquely enterprising military spirit
displayed by the Yuma and Mohave is undoubtedly connected with
this sense of cohesion.
The extreme of political anarchy is found in the northwest, where
there was scarcely a tendency to group villages into higher units, and
where even a village was not conceived as an assential unit. In prac
tice a northwestern village was likely to act as a body, but it did so
either because its inhabitants were kinsmen, or because it contained
a man of sufficient wealth to have established personal relations of
«,
284 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Etlm. [Vol. 13
obligation between himself and individual fellow-townsmen not related
to him in blood. The Yurok, Karok, and Hupa, and probably several
of the adjacent groups, simply did not recognize any organization
which transcended individuals and kin groups.
In north central California the rudiments of a tribal organization
are discernible among the Porno, Yuki, and Maidu and may be
assumed to have prevailed among most other groups. A tribe in this
region was a small body, evidently including on the average not much
more than a hundred souls. It did not possess distinctive speech, a
number of such tribes being normally included in the range of a single
dialect. Each was obviously in substance a "village community,"
although the term "village" in this connection must be understood
as implying a tract of land rather than a settlement as such. In most
cases the population of the little tribe was divided between several
settlements, each presumably consisting of a few households more or
less intimately connected by blood; but there was" also a site which
was regarded as the principal one inhabited. Subsidiary settlements
were frequently abandoned, reoccupied, or newly founded. The prin
cipal village was maintained more permanently. The limits of the
territory of the group were well defined, comprising in most cases a
natural drainage area. A chief was recognized for the tribe. There
is some indication that his elevation may often have been subject to
popular consent, although hereditary tendencies are likely to have
been rather more influential in most cases. The minor settlements or
groups of kinsmen had each their lesser chief or head-man. There
was no proper name for the tribe. It was designated either by the
name of its principal settlement or by that of its chief. Among for
eigners these little groups sometimes bore names which were used
much like true tribal names ; but 011 an analysis these almost invari
ably prove to mean only * ' people of such and such a place or district.
This type of organization is likely to have prevailed as far south as
the Miwok in the interior and the Costanoans or Salmans on the
coast, and northward to the Achomawi and possibly the Modoc.
The Yokuts, and apparently they alone, attained a nearer approach
to a full tribal system. Their tribes were larger, ranging from a
hundred and fifty to four hundred or five hundred members; pos
sessed names which usually did not refer to localities; and spoke
distinctive dialects, although these were often only slightly divergent
from the neighboring tongues. The territory of each tribe was larger
than in the Maidu-Pomo region, and a principal permanent village
looms with prominence only in some cases.
1922] Krocber: Elements of Culture in Native California 285
The Shoshoneans of Nevada, and with them those of the eastern
desert fringe of California, possessed an organization which appears
to be somewhat akin to that of the Yokuts. They were divided into
groups of about the same size as the Yokuts, each without a definite
metropolis, rather shifting within its range, and headed by a chief
possessing considerable influence. The groups were almost through
out named after a characteristic diet, thus " fish eaters" or "mountain-
sheep eaters. " It is not known how far each of these tribes possessed
a unique dialect : if they did, their speech distinctness was in most
cases minimal. Owing to the open and poorly productive nature of
the country, the territory of each of these groups of the Shoshonean
Great Basin was considerably more extensive than in the Yokuts
habitat.
Political conditions in southern California are very obscure, but
are likely to have been generally similar to those of north central
California. Among the Chumash, towns of some size were inhabited
century after century, and these undoubtedly were the centers if not
the bases of political groups.
The Mohave and other Yuman tribes of the Colorado valley waged
war as tribal units. Their settlements were small, shifting, apparently
determined in the main by the location of their fields, and enter little
into their own descriptions of their life. It is clear that the Mohave 's
sense of attachment was primarily to his people as a body, and
secondarily to his country as a whole. The California!! Indian, with
the partial exception of the Yokuts, always gives the impression of
being attached first of all to a spot, or at most a few miles of stream
or valley, and to his blood kindred or a small group of lifelong asso
ciates and intimates.
It should be added that the subject of political organization is
perhaps the topic in most urgent need of investigation in the whole
field of California ethnology.
I/
THE CHIEF
Chieftainship is still wrapped in much the same obscurity and
vagueness as political bodies. There were no doubt hereditary chiefs
in many parts of California. But it is difficult to determine how far
inheritance was the formally instituted avenue to office, or was only
actually operative in the majority of instances. In general it seems
that chieftainship was more definitely liej^jditaiy in the southern
half or two-thirds of the state than in the north central area. Wealth
was a factor of 'some consequence in relation to chieftainship every-
286 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
where, but its influence seems also to have varied according to locality.
The northwestern tribes had hereditarily rich men of great influence,
but no chiefs. Being without political organization, they could not
well have had the latter.
The degree of authority of the chief is very difficult to estimate.
This is a matter which can not be judged accurately from the accounts
of relations between native groups and intruders belonging to a more
highly civilized alien race. To understand the situation between the
chief and his followers in the routine of daily life, it is necessary to
have at command a more intimate knowledge of this life before its
disturbance by Caucasian culture than is available for most Califor-
nian groups. It does seem that the authority of the chief was con
siderable everywhere as far north as the Miwok, and by no means
negligible beyond; while in the northwest the social effect of wealth
was so great as to obtain for the rich a distinctly commanding position.
Among certain of the Shoshoneans of southern California the chief,
the assistant or religious chief, and their wives or children, were all
known by titles; which fact argues that a fairly great deference was
accorded them. Their authority probably did not lag much behind.
Both the Juaneno and the Chumash are said to have gone to war to
avenge slights put upon their chiefs. The director of rituals as an
assistant to the head chief is a southern California institution. Some
what similar is the central Yokuts practice of having two chiefs for
each tribe, one to represent each exogamous moiety. The chief had
speakers, messengers, or similar henchmen with named offices, among
the Coast Miwok, the interior Miwok, the Yokuts, the Juaneno, and
no doubt among other groups.
The chief was everywhere distinctly a civil official. If he com
manded also in battle, it seems to have been only through the accident
of being a distinguished warrior as well. The usual war leader was
merely that individual in the group who was able to inspire confidence
through having displayed courage, skill, and enterprise in combat. It
is only natural that his voice should have carried weight even in time
of peace ; but he seems not to have been regarded as holding an office.
This distinction between the chief and the military leader appears to
apply even to the Yuma and Mohave, among whom bravery was the
supreme virtue.
There were no hereditary priests in California. A religious func
tion often passed from father to son or brother's son, but the successor
took his place because his kinship had caused him to acquire the
necessary knowledge, not in virtue of his descent as such. At that
1922J Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 287
^there was hardly a recognized class of priests. The old man who knew
most held the direction of ceremonies ; and in the Kuksu region a man
became clown, or mcki, or ku-ksu, or some other specific impersonator,
rather than a priest as such.
The shaman of course was never an official in the true sense of the
word, inasmuch as his power was necessarily of individual acquisition
and varied directly according to his supernatural potency, or, as we
should call it, his gifts of personality.
y
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
Social classes of different level are hardly likely to ' develop
markedly in so primitive a society as that of California, It is there
fore highly distinctive of the northwestern area that the social strati
fication which forms so important an element in the culture of the
North Pacific coast, appears among these people with undiminished
vigor. The heraldic and symbolic devices of the more advanced tribes
a thousand miles to the north are lacking among the Yurok : the con
sciousness of the different value of a rich and a poor man is as keen
among them as with the Kwakiutl or the Haida.
The northwest is also the only part of California that knew slavery.
This institution rested upon the economic basis of debt.
Wealth was by no means a negligible factor in the remainder of
California, but it clearly did not possess the same influence as in the
northwest. There seems to have been an effort to regulate matters
so that the chief, through the possession of several wives, or through
contributions, was in a position to conduct himself with liberality,
especially toward strangers and in time of need. On the whole he was
wealthy because he was chief rather than the reverse. Among the
Colorado river tribes a thoroughly democratic spirit prevailed as
regards property, and there was a good deal of the Plains sentiment
that it behooved a true man to be contemptuous of material possessions.
EXOGAMY AND TOTEMISM
California was long regarded as a region lacking clan^group
totems, or other exogamous social units. The ColoradajdYer. tribes
were indeed known to be divided into clans, and the Miwok into
moieties, both carrying ccrlain rather indirect totcmic associations.
But these seemed to be isolated exceptions. More recent information,
however, due mainly to the investigations of E. W. Gifford, shows that
some form of gentile organization was prevalent among nearly all
288 University of California Publications in Am. Aroli. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
groups from the Miwok south to the Yuma; and the principal types
which this organization assumes have become clear at least in outline.
In brief the situation is this. Almost everywhere within the area
in question, the units are exogamous. Nearly always they are totemic.
Descent is invariably patrilinear. In the extreme south or southeast
the division of society is on the basis of multiple clans; in the San
Joaquin valley of moieties; between, that is, roughly in the region
of the northern part of southern California, there are clans and moie
ties. Toward the head of the San Joaquin valley there is a tract over
which clans, moieties, and totems are all lacking. This tongue of
clanless area may represent intrusive or conservative influence from
the desert Shoshoneans on the east. It very likely did not wholly
sever the totemic social organizations of central and southern Cali
fornia, for there is no definite information available on the most
southwesterly body of Yokuts, the Chunmsh, the Kitanemuk, or the
Gabrielino, and if these groups possessed moieties, clans, or totems,
they would connect the two areas into a continuous unit.
It is hardly possible to doubt that the totemic clan or moiety
system of California stands in a positive historic relation to that of
the Southwest. The fact of its being a patrilinear system, whereas
the southwestern Indians reckon descent in the female line, indicates
only that the connection is ancient and indirect. Both the chief
other North American regions in which totemic clans or moieties pre
vail, the North Pacific coast and the eastern side of the continent, are
divided into patrilinear and matrilinear sub-areas. The continental
distribution is such that it would be more than hazardous to assume
the patrilinear institutions of the North Pacific, the East, and the
Southwest-California area to have been derived from a common source,
and the matrilinear institutions of the same three regions from a
second origin. It is as clear as such matters can be that a system of
gentile organization developed around three centers — whether these
were thoroughly independent of one another or were originally related
is a question that need not be considered here — and that within each
area, with the growth and diversification of the institution, paternal
and maternal reckoning grew up side by side or one after the other.
In other words, the impulse toward the division of society on the
basis of exogamous hereditary groups is the older. The predominance
accorded to one sex or the other in the reckoning of descent is a
direction subsequently assumed. Such being the indicated course of
continental development, we need be under no hesitation in linking
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California. 289
the totemic exogamy of California with that of the Southwest, in spite
of its decisive patrilinear character.
As to the age of the institution in the two regions, there can be
little doubt that as in most matters probable precedence should be
given to the Southwest on the ground of the generally greater com
plexity and development of its culture. It is only necessary to guard
against the hasty inference that, because the connection is almost
certain and the radiation from New Mexico and Arizona into Califor
nia probable, this movement has been a recent one whose course can
still be traced by the present location of this or that particular tribe.
The clans of the Colorado river tribes are fairly numerous, a dozen
or more for each group. They have no names as such, but are each
characterized by the use of a single name borne by all the women of
a clan. These women's names can usually not be analyzed, but are
understood by the Indians as denotive of an animal or object which
is clearly the totem of the clan. This system is common without
material modification to all the Yumans of the river, but the totemic
references vary considerably, and the women 's names even more. The
latter must have fluctuated with considerable readiness, since only
a small proportion of the total number known are common even to
two tribes.
With the Dieguerio and Luiseno the system loses many of its char
acteristics. Totemism, direct or indirect, is wholly lajcking. The
groups are numerous and small. Their names when translatable are
mostly those of localities, or have reference to a locality. The native
theory is clearly that each clan is a local kin group. How far this was
actually the case, is very difficult to determine positively, since mission
residence, and among even the remoter sections of these groups a
century or more of Caucasian contact, have rather disintegrated the
native life.
With the Cupeilo, Cahuilla, and Serrano, the institution is rein-
vigorated. The local groups persist as among the Luisefio and
Diegueno and bear similar names. They are, however, united into
two great moieties — named after the coyote and wild cat — which are
thus totemic, and which are also the essential units determining
exogamy. The clans are numerous, small, and probably consist in
the main of actual or even traceable blood kinsmen related in the
male line.
From here on northward follows the gap in our knowledge. It is
however certain that the Shoshonean Kawaiisu and Tiibatulabal, and
290 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
the southern Yokuts such as the Yaudanchi and Yauelmani, were at
least substantially free from the influence of any exogamous system.
When this negative or doubtful zone has been passed through, we
find ourselves well in the San Joaquin valley. Here, among the
central Yokuts, according to some slender indications among the
Salinans, probably among the northern Yokuts, and among all the
Sierra Miwok, clans have wholly disappeared. The exogamous moiety
however remains, and its totemic aspects are rather more developed
than in the south. The Miwok carry the toternic scheme farthest,
dividing the universe as it were into totemic halves, so that all its
natural contents are potential totems of one or the other moiety.
Among the other groups of this region the totemism is generally
restricted to a limited number of birds or animals. Moieties are vari
ously designated as land and water, downstream and upstream, blue-
jay and coyote, bull-frog and coj^ote, or bear and deer. The totem
is spoken of as the "dog," that is domestic animal or pet, of each
individual. Among the Miwok the personal name refers to an animal
or object of the individual's moiety, but the totem itself is hardly ever
expressed in the name, the reference being by some implication which
can hardly be intelligible to those who do not know the individual and
his moiety.
The Western Mono, at least in the northern part of their range,
have come under the influence of the Miwok- Yokuts system, but this
has assumed a somewhat aberrant shape among them. They subdivide
each moiety into two groups which might be called clans except for
the fact that they are not exogamous. The names of these groups
have not yielded to certain translation. The Mono seem to identify
them with localities.
Matrilinear descent has once been reported for a single Yokuts
tribe, the Gashowu, but is so directly at variance with all that is
known of the institutions of the region, as to be almost certainly an
error of observation. On the other hand, there are more positive
indications, mainly in kinship designations and the inheritance of
chieftainship, of a reckoning in the female line among some of the
Porno and. Wappo ; and these are the more credible because the Porno
lie outside of the exogamic and totemic area of California. The evi
dence pointing to Porno matrilineate is however slight, and it is clear
that the institution was at most a sort of suggestion, an undeveloped
beginning or last vestige, and not a practice of much consequence.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 291
This inference is strengthened by the fact that the several Porno and
Wappo divisions conflict in their usages on the points involved.
Totemic taboos are not known to have been strongly developed in
California. Among most groups the totem seems to have been killed
and eaten without further thought. Belief in descent from the totem
is also weak or absent, except for some introduction of the moiety
totems into the cosmogony of the Shoshoneans of the south.
The exogamic groups of California have rather few religious func
tions. The Colorado river clans seem to have no connection with
ritual. The clans of some of the Shoshoneans — Luiseno, Cupeno,
possibly Cahuilla — tended to be the bodies that conducted ceremonies,
the instruments for ritual execution; although the rites were nearly
identical, not peculiar to each clan. It appears also that these ritually
functioning groups or "parties" often included several clans, and
always admitted individuals who had become disgruntled with their"
hereditary groups. It is thus likely that these religious associations
really crystallized around chiefs rather than on a clan basis. Indeed,
the word for such a group is merely the word for chief. Among
other groups of the south, such as the Serrano, the moieties, or their
clan representatives in a given locality, appear to have been charged
with religious privileges and duties. But the situation remains in
need of more intimate elucidation. In the San Joaquin valley, the
moieties assumed ceremonial obligations, usually reciprocal, and evi
dently in the main in connection with the mourning anniversary ; but
these arrangements faded out toward the north, among the Miwok.
MAEEIAGE^
Marriage is by purchase almost everywhere in California, the
groups east of the Sierra and those on the Colorado river providing
the only exceptions. Among the latter there is scarcely a formality
observed. A man and a woman go to live together and the marriage
is recognized as long as the union endures. While some form of bride-
purchase is in vogue over the remainder of the state, its import is
very different according to localit}^. The northwestern tribes make of
it a definite, commercial, negotiated transaction, the absence of which
prior to living together constitutes a serious injury to the family of
the girl, whereas a liberal payment enhances the status of both bride
and groom and their children. In the southern half of the state, and.
among the mountaineers of the north, payment has little more sig
nificance than a customary observance. It might be described as an
292 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
affair of manners rather than morals. Formal negotiations are not
always carried on, and. in some instances the young man shows his
intentions and is accepted merely on the strength of some presents
of game or the rendering of an ill-defined period of service before or
after the union. Even within comparatively restricted regions there
is considerable difference in this respect between wealthy valley
dwellers and poor highlanders : the northern Maidu furnish an inter
esting case in point.
So far as known the levirate or marriage of the widow by her
dead husband's brother was the custom of all Calif ornians except
those on the Colorado. The same may be said of the "sororate" or
"glorate," the widower's marriage to his dead wife's sister, or in
cases of polygamy to two sisters or to mother and daughter. On
account of this almost universal occurrence, these customs may be
looked upon as basic and ancient institutions. The uniformity of
their prevalence in contrast to the many intergrading forms assumed
by the marriage act, and in contrast also to the differences as regards
exogamy, renders it highly probable that if an attempt be made to
bring the levirate and sororate into relation with these other institu
tions, the levirate and sororate must be regarded as antecedent — as
established practices to which marriage, exogamy, and descent con
formed.
VAEIOUS SOCIAL HABITS
A rigid custom prescribes that the widow crop or singe off her
hair and cover the stubble as well as her face with pitch, throughout
a great part of central California. This defacement is left on until
the next mourning anniversary or for a year or sometimes longer.
The groups that are known to follow this practice are the Achomawi,
Shasta, Maidu, Wintun, Kato, Porno, and Miwok ; also the Chukchansi,
that is the northern hill Yokuts. Among the Southern Yokuts the
widow merely does not wash her face during the period in which she
abstains from eating meat. Beyond the Yokuts, there is no reference
to the custom ; nor is it known from any northwestern people.
A mourning necklace is northern. The northwestern tribes braid
a necklace which is worn for a year or longer after the death of a
near relative or spouse. The Achomawi and Northeastern Maidu, per
haps other groups also, have their widows put on a necklace of lumps
of pitch.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 293
A belt made of the hair cut from her head was worn by the widow
among the Shastan tribes, that is the Shasta, Achomawi, and Atsugewi.
In southern California, belts and hair ties and other ornaments of
human hair reappear, but do not have so definite a reference to
mourning.
The couvade was practiced by nearly all Californians, but not in
its "classic" form of the father alone observing restrictions and pre
tending to lie in. The usual custom was for both parents to be affected
equally and for the same period. They observed food restraints and
worked and traveled as little as possible in order to benefit their child ;
they did not ward illness from the infant by shamming it themselves.
The custom might well be described as a semi-couvade. It has been
reported among the Achomawi, Maidu, Yuki, Porno, Yokuts, Juaneno,
and Dieguerio. Only the Yurok, Hupa, Shasta, and with them pre
sumably the Karok and a few other northwestern tribes, are known
not to have followed the practice. Here too there are certain restric
tions on both parents ; but those of the father are much the lighter
and briefer.
Fear toward twins is known to have been felt by the Yurok,
Achomawi, and Northwestern Maidu of the hills. It is likely to have
prevailed more widely, but these instances suggest that the most acute
development of the sentiment may have been localized in northern
California.
The child's umbilical cord was saved, carefully disposed of, or
specially treated. The Diegueilo, Luiseno, Juaneno, and Chukchansi
Yokuts buried it. The Tachi Yokuts tied it on the child's abdomen.
The Hupa and Yurok kept it for a year or two, then deposited it in
a split tree.
V
KINSHIP TABOOS
f The taboo which forbids parents-in-law and children-in-law to
look each other in the face or speak or communicate, was a central
Californian custom. It is recorded for the Kato, Porno, Maidu,
Miwok, Yokuts, and Western Mono; with whom at least the southerly
Wintun must probably be included. The Yuki, perhaps the Yana,
the Eastern Mono, the Tiibatulabal, and the Kawaiisu seem not to
have adhered to the practice, whose distribution is therefore recog
nizable as holding over a continuous and rather regular area whose
core is the Sacramento-San Joaquin valley. There is no mention of
29-i University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
the habit in regard to any northwestern or southern tribe. Actually,
the mother-in-law is alone specified in some instances, but these may
be cases of loose or incomplete record. Accuracy also necessitates the
statement that among the Kato and Porno the custom has not been
reported directly, but it is known that they address a parent-in-law
in the plural — a device which the Miwok and Western Mono make use
of as an allowable circumvention of the taboo when there is the
requisite occasion. The Kato and Porno were shy toward their
parents-in-law, but much less scrupulous about rigidly avoiding all
communication with them than the Northwestern Maidu.
It may be added that among the Yana and the Western Mono,
two far separated and unrelated peoples, brother and sister used
plural address. For the Yana it is stated that a certain degree of
avoidance was also observed. This custom can be looked for with
some likelihood among the intervening nations ; but to predict it would
be rash. There are many purely local developments in California!!
culture : witness the sex diversity of speech among the Yana.
As in other parts of America, no reason for the custom can be
obtained from the natives. It is a way they have, they answer; or they
would be ashamed to do otherwise. That they feel positive disgrace
at speaking brusquely to a parent-in-law is certain ; but this sentiment
can no more be accounted the direct cause of the origin of the custom
than a sense of shame can by itself have produced the manifold varie
ties of dress current among mankind. It need not be doubted that a
sense of delicacy with reference to sexual relations lies at the root of
the habit. But to imagine that a native might really l?e able to explain
the ultimate source of any of his institutions or manners, is of course
unreasonable.
DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD
The manner of disposing of the dead varied greatly according to
region in California. The areas in which cremation was practiced
seem to aggregate somewhat larger than those in which burial was
the custom, but the balance is nearly even, and the distribution quite
irregular (map 2). Roughly, five areas can be distinguished.
The southern Californian area burned its dead.
1922]
Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California
295
"I
DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD
^^^^ CT-ema.tion
MM Bur.a.1
296 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
Interment was the rule over a tract which seems to extend from
the Great Basin across the southern Sierras to the Chumash and Santa
Barbara islands. This includes the Chemehuevi, the Eastern Mono,
the Tiibatulabal, the Southern Yokuts, the Chumash, and perhaps a
few of the adjacent minor Shoshonean groups.
A second region of cremation follows. This consists of the entire
central Sierra Nevada, the San Joaquin valley except at its head, the
lower Sacramento valley, and the coast region for about the same
distance. Roughly, the range is from the Salinans and Central
Yokuts to the Porno and Southern Maidu.
A second area of burial takes in all of the tribes under the influence
of the northwestern culture, and in addition to them the Yuki, at
least the majority of the "Wintun, and most of the northern Maidu.
The Modoc in the northeastern corner of the state again cremated.
For the adjoining Achomawi the evidence conflicts. It is possible
that this northern region was connected with the central area of
cremation through the Yahi and Northwestern Maidu of the foothills.
It seems impossible to establish any correlation between custom
and environment in this matter. Treeless and timbered regions both
cremated and in other cases interred.
It does appear that the southern and central culture areas can
be described as regions of prevailing cremation, the northwestern
culture and the desert as areas of burial. The practice of each of the
two interring regions has to some extent penetrated the adjacent parts
of the central area. Interment however extends farther beyond the
outer limits of the northwestern culture than almost all other insti
tutions or elements which are definitely characteristic of the north
west, basketry and dentalia, for instance. Furthermore, there is the
curious assemblage of buying peoples from the Eastern Mono to the
Santa Barbara islands, which can scarcely correspond to any primary
cultural stratum.
Warfare throughout California was carried on only for revenge,
never for plunder or from a desire of distinction. The Mohave and
Yuma must indeed be excepted from this statement, but their attitude
is entirely unique. Probably the cause that most commonly originated
feuds was the belief that a death had been caused by witchcraft. No
doubt theft and disputes of various sorts also contributed. Once ill
feeling was established, it was likely to continue for long periods.
1922] Kroebcr: Elements of Culture in Native California 297
Even a reconciliation and formal peace must generally have left lurk
ing suspicions which the natives' theory of disease was likely at any
moment to fan into fresh accusation and a renewal of hostilities.
Torture has been reported as having been practiced by several
tribes, such as the Maidu and the Gabrielino. It appears to have been
considered merely a preliminary to the execution of captives, which
was the victors' main purpose. As a rule, men who could be seized
in warfare were killed and decapitated on the spot. Women and
children were also slaughtered more frequently than enslaved. There
is no record of any attempt to hold men as prisoners.
Scalps were taken in the greater part of California, brought home
in triumph, and celebrated over, usually by a dance around a pole.
Women as well as men generally participated. Some tribes made the
dance indoors, others outside. There was no great formality about
this scalp dance of victory. It may often have been celebrated with
great abandon, but its ritual was loose and simple. The Mohave and
Yuma alone show some organization of the ceremony, coupled with a
considerable manifestation of dread of the scalps themselves — a South
western trait.
It is rather difficult to decide how far the scalp taken was literally
such and how far it was the entire head. A fallen foe that could be
operated upon in safety and leisure was almost always decapitated,
and his head brought home. Sometimes it is said that this head was
danced with. In other localities it was skinned at the first opportunity
and the scalp alone used in the dance. The scalp, however, was always
a larger object than we are accustomed to think with the habits of
eastern tribes in mind. The skin taken extended to the eyes and
nose and included the ears. There is no evidence of an endeavor to
preserve scalps as permanent trophies to the credit of individuals;
nor of a feeling that anything was lost by a failure to secure scalps,
other than that an occasion for a pleasant celebration might be missed
thereby.
It is signficant that it remains doubtful whether the Yokuts, the
valley Maidu, and the Porno took scalps or performed a scalp dance.
If they did so, it was clearly with less zest than most of their neigh
bors. All of the tribes in question are peoples of lowland habitat,
considerable wealth, and comparative specialization of culture.
In the northwestern area no scalps were taken, and the victory
dance was replaced by one of incitement before battle. In this dance
the fully armed warriors stood abreast, with one or more of their
298 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
number moving before them. With the Yurok and Hupa, and per
haps some of their immediate neighbors also, this dance was par
ticularly made when two hostile parties gathered for a settlement
of a feud; and, as might be expected, as often as not resulted in a
new fight instead of the desired peace. The northwestern habit of
not scalping extended at least as far south as the Sinkyone and as
far east as the Shasta. The Wintuji on the Trinity river are also said
to have taken no scalps and may therefore be supposed to have prac
ticed the associated form of war dance. Finally, there is an echo of
the Yurok custom from as far away as the Maidu of the northern
Sacramento valley, who it is said had a war dance performed by
armed negotiators.
The battle weapon of California was the bow. Spears have been
mentioned as in use by a number of tribes, but all indications are
that they were employed only sporadically in hand to hand fighting,
and not for hurling from the ranks. It is probable that they were
serviceable in an ambush or early morning rush upon the unsuspecting
sleepers in a village. In a set fight the spear could not be used
against a row of bowmen.
Southern California used the Pueblo type of war club, a rather
short, stout stick expanded into a longitudinal mallet head. This
seems to have been meant for thrusting into an opponent's face rather
than for downright clubbing. The Mohave at any rate knew a second
form of club, a somewhat longer, straight, and heavy stick, which
served the specific purpose of breaking skulls. In central California
mentions of clubs are exceedingly scarce. If they were used they were
probably nothing but suitable sticks. When it came to hand to hand
fighting the central Californian was likely to have recourse to the
nearest stone. Stones were also favored by the northwestern tribes,
but in addition there are some examples of a shaped war club of stone
in this region. This club was a little over a foot long and rudely
edged, somewhat in the shape of a narrow and thick paddle blade.
This type has affiliations with the more elaborate stone and bone clubs
used farther north on the Pacific coast.
Slings seem to have been known to practically all the Californians
as toys, and in some parts were used effectively for hunting water
fowl. The only definite reports of the use of slings in warfare are
from the Wintun of Trinity river and the Western Mono; both
mountaineers.
The shield, which is so important to the Plains Indian and to the
Southwestern warrior, was known in California only to the Mohave,
Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 299
the Yuma, and the Dieguefio, that is to say, the local representatives
of the Yuman family. It was a round piece of unornamented hide.
There is no reference to symbolism, and it appears to have been
carried only occasionally. Not a single original specimen has been
preserved. Much as tribes like the Mohave speak of war, they very
rarely mention the shield, and its occurrence among them and their
kinsmen is of interest chiefly as an evidence that the distribution of
this object reached the Pacific coast.
Armor enters the state at the other end, also as an extension from
a great extra-Californian culture. It is either of elk hide, or of
rods twined with string in waistcoat shape. The rod type is reported
from the northwestern tribes, the Achomawi, and the northern moun
tain Maidu. Elk skin armor has been found among the same groups,
as well as the Modoc, Shasta, northern valley Maidu, and Wailaki.
These closely coincident distributions indicate that the two armor
types are associated, not alternative ; and that, confined to the north
ernmost portion of the state, they are to be understood as the marginal
outpost of the extension of an idea that probably originated in the
eastern hemisphere and for America centers in the culture of the
North Pacific coast.
The greater part of central California appears to have been armor-
less and shieldless.
RELIGION AND KNOWLEDGE
SHAMANISM
The shamanistic practices of California are fairly uniform, and
similar to those obtaining among the North American Indians gen
erally. The primary function of the California shaman is the curing
of disease. The illness is almost always considered due to the pres
ence in the body of some foreign or hostile object. Only among the
Colorado river tribes is there definite record of belief in an abstrac
tion or injury of the soul. The shaman's usual business, therefore,
is the removal of the disease object, and this in the great majority of
cases is carried out by sucking. Singing, dancing, and smoking
tobacco, with or without the accompaniment of trance conditions, are
the usual diagnostic means. Manipulation of the body, brushing it,
and blowing of tobacco smoke, breath, or saliya — the last especially
among the Colorado river tribes — are sometimes resorted to in the
extraction of the disease object.
300 University of California Publications in Am. Aroh. and Etlm. [Vol. 13
As contrasted with the general similarity of the practices of the
established shaman, there is a considerable diversity of methods
employed by the prospective shaman in the acquisition of his super
natural powers. This diversity is connected with a variety of beliefs
concerning guardian spirits.
In central California, from the Wailaki and Maidu to the Yokuts,
the guardian spirit is of much the same character as with the Indians
of the central and eastern United States, and is obtained in a similar
way. A supernatural being or animal or other form is seen and con
versed with during a trance or dream. Sometimes the spirits come
to a man unsought, occasionally there is an avowed attempt to acquire
them.
For southern California, information on these matters is still
tantalizingly scant, which may indicate that beliefs are meager. The
sources of shamanistic power seem to have been deities, monsters, or
heavenly phenomena more often than animals or unnamed spirits.
Repeated dreams, especially in childhood, seem to produce shamans
among the Cahuilla more often than unique experiences of trance or
vision type. This is probably an approximation to the point of view
of the tribes on the Colorado. It must not be overlooked that the
concept of a definite guardian spirit and the institution of shamanism
in its common American form are weakly developed among the tribes
of the Southwest, especially the Pueblos.
Among the Colorado river peoples it is certain that there was no
belief in a guardian spirit of the usual kind. Shamans derived their
power by dreaming of the creator or some ancient divinity, or as they
themselves sometimes describe it, from having associated before their
birth — in other words during a previous spiritual existence — with the
gods or divine animals that were on earth at the beginning. The
culture of the Colorado river tribes is so specialized that to apply a
positive inference from them to the remaining southern Calif ornians
would be unsound ; but it must be admitted that their status increases
the possibility that the latter tribes did not very fully share the central
Californian and usual northern and eastern ideas as to the source of
shamanistic power.
In northern California, and centering as usual among the north
western tribes, beliefs as to the source of shamanistic power take a
peculiar turn. Among peoples like the Yurok the guardian spirit in
the ordinary sense scarcely occurs. The power of the shaman rests
not upon the aid or control of a guardian, but upon his maintenance
in his own body of disease objects which to non-shamans would be
1922] Kroebcr: Elements of Culture in Native California 301
fatal. These " pains" are animate and self-moving, but are always
conceived as minute, physically concrete, and totally lacking human
shape or resemblance. Their acquisition by the shaman is due to a
dream in which a spirit gives them to him or puts them in his body.
This spirit seems most frequently to be an ancestor who has had
shamanistic power. The dream, however, does not constitute the
shaman as such, since the introduced "pain" causes illness in him as
in other persons. His condition is diagnosed by accepted shamans,
and a long and rigorous course of training follows, whose object is
the inuring of the novice to the presence of the "pains" in his body
and to the acquisition of control over them. Fasting and analogous
means are employed for this purpose, but the instruction of older
shamans seems to be regarded as an essential feature, culminating in
what is usually known as the "doctors' dance." This dance is there
fore substantially a professional initiation ceremony. There is no
doubt that it provided the opportunity for the establishment of
shamans' societies as organized bodies; but this step seems never to
have been taken in California.
From the Yurok and Hupa this peculiar type of shamanism spreads
out gradually, losing more and more of its elements, to at least as far
as the Maidu. Already among the Shasta the shaman controls spirits
as well as "pains," but the name for the two is identical. With the
Achomawi and Maidu the "pain" and the spirit are differently desig
nated. Here, the doctor's concern in practice is more largely with
the ' ' pains, ' ' but his control of them rests definitely upon his relation
to the spirits as such. The doctor dance persists among all these
tribes. It is practiced also by the northerly Wintun and the Yuki.
The Yuki shamans possess and acquire spirits very much like the
central Calif ornians, and these are sometimes animals. The "pain"
is still of some importance among them, however, and they and the
Wintun agree in calling it "arrowhead." A line running across the
state south of the Yuki, and probably through Wintun and Maidu
territory about its middle, marks the farthest extension of remnants
of the northwestern type of shamanism.
Among the Porno there is no mention of the doctor dance, while
indications of a considerable use of amulets or fetishes suggest that
entirely different sets of concepts obtain. The Miwok and Yokuts
also knew of nothing like a "doctor dance," and with them it would
seem that the Maidu of the south may have to be included, although
here direct evidence is not available.
302 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
It may be added that central and southern California are a unit
in regarding shamanistic power as indifferently beneficent or malevo
lent. Whether a given shaman causes death or prevents it is merely
a matter of his inclination. His power is equal in both directions.
Much disease, if not the greater part, is caused by hostile or spiteful
shamans. Witchcraft and the power of the doctor are therefore
indissolubly bound up together. The unsuccessful shaman, particu
larly if repeatedly so, was thought to be giving prima facie evidence
of evil intent, and earnest attempts to kill him almost invariably
followed. In other cases individuals in a neighboring group were
blamed. This was perhaps the most frequent cause of the feuds or
- so-called wars of the central and southern Calif ornian tribes.
In the northwest this intertwining of the two aspects of super
natural power was slighter. Shamans were less frequently killed, and
then rather for refusal to give treatment or for unwillingness to
return pay tendered in treatment, than for outright witchcraft.
A person who wished to destroy another had recourse to magical
practice. This northwestern limitation of shamanism is probably
connected with the fact that among the tribes where it was most
marked the shaman was almost invariably a woman. In these matters,
too, tribes as far as the Maidu shared in some measure in the beliefs
which attained their most clear-cut form among the Yurok and Hupa.
The use of supernatural spirit power was on the whole perhaps
more largely restricted to the treatment or production of disease in
J California than in most other parts of aboriginal North America.
There is comparatively little reference to men seeking association with
spirits for success in warfare, hunting, or love, although it is natural
that ideas of this kind crop out now and then. There are however
three specialties which in the greater part of the state lead to the
recognition of as many particular kinds of shamans or "doctors,"
as they are usually known in local usage. These are rain or weather
doctors, rattlesnake doctors, and bear doctors.
The rain doctor seems generally to have exercised his control over
the weather in addition to possessing the abilities of an ordinary
shaman. Very largely he used his particular faculty, like Samuel,
to make impression by demonstrations. All through the southern
half of the state there were men who were famous as rain doctors, and
the greatest development of the idea appears to have been in the
region where central and southern California meet. Control of the
weather by shamans was however believed in to the northern limit
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 303
of the state, though considerably less was made of it there. The
groups within the intensive northwestern culture are again in nega
tive exception.
The rattlesnake doctor is also not northwestern, although tribes
as close to the focus of this culture as the Shasta knew him. His
business of course was to cure snake bites; in some cases also to pre-<
vent them. Among the Yokuta a fairly elaborate ceremony, which
included the juggling of rattlesnakes, was an outgrowth of these
beliefs. Less important or conspicuous demonstrations of the same
sort seem also to have been made among a number of other tribes,
since we know that the northern Maidu of the valley had some kind
of a public rattlesnake ceremony conducted by their shamans. There
appears to have been some inclination to regard the sun as_the spirit
tqjvhich rattlesnake doctors particularly looked.
The bear doctor was recognized over the entire state from the
Shasta to the Diegueilo. The Colorado river tribes, those of the
extreme northwest, and possibly those of the farthest northeastern
corner of the state, are the only ones among whom this impressive
institution was apparently lacking. The bear shaman had the power
to turn himself into a grizzly bear. In. this form he destroyed enemies.
The most general belief, particularly in the San Joaquin valley and
southern California, was that he became actually transmuted. In the
region of the Wintun, Porno, and Yuki, however, it seems to have
been believed that the bear doctor, although he possessed undoubted
supernatural power, operated by means of a bear skin and other
paraphernalia in which he encased himself. Generally bear shamans
were thought invulnerable, or at least to possess the power of return
ing to life. They inspired an extraordinary fear and yet seem to
have been encouraged. It is not unlikely that they were often looked
upon as benefactors to the group to which they belonged and as exer
cising their destructive faculties chiefly against its foes. In some
tribes they gave exhibitions of their power; in others, as among the
Porno, the use of their faculties was carefully guarded from all obser
vation. Naturally enough, their power was considered to be derived
from bears, particularly the grizzly. It is the ferocity and tenacity
of life of this species that clearly impressed the imagination of the
Indians, and a more accurately descriptive name of the caste would be
' ' grizzly-bear shamans. ' '
Throughout northern California a distinction is made between
the shaman who sings, dances, and smokes in order to diagnose, in
304 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
other words, is a clairvoyant, and a second class endowed with the
executive power of sucking out disease objects, that is, curing sickness.
This grouping of shamans has been reported from the Hupa, Wiyot,
Nongall, Yuki, Porno, and Maidu. It has not been mentioned among
more southerly peoples. It thus coincides in its distribution with the
concept of the "pain" as a more or less animate and self-impelled
thing, and the two ideas can scarcely be interpreted as other than
connected. The sucking shaman seems to be rated higher than the
one that only sings ; as is only natural, since his power in some meas
ure presupposes and includes that of his rival. It is not unlikely, how
ever, that certain singing shamans were believed to possess a special
diagnostic power over illness, and no doubt all such matters as finding
lost objects and foretelling the future were their particular province.
CULT EELIGIONS
The cults or definitely formulated religions of California are too
intricate to be described here, so that the following discussion is con
fined to their interrelations and certain questions of broader aspect.
The respective ranges of the four cults are plotted on map 2.
It appears from this map that the specific northwestern cultus
is separated from that of north central California by a belt of tribes
that participate in neither.
The religions of north central and southern California, or Kuksu
and "toloache" cults, on the other hand, seem to have overlapped
in the region of the northern Yokuts and Salinans. It is unlikely
that the two cults existed side by side with undiminished vigor among
the same peoples ; one was probably much abbreviated and reduced
to subsidiary rank while the other maintained itself in flourishing or
at least substantial^ full status. Unfortunately the tribes that seem
to have shared the two religions are the very ones whose culture has
long since melted away, so that data are exceedingly elusive. It is
not improbable that fuller knowledge would show that the religions
reacted towards each other like the basketry complexes that have been
discussed: namely, that they were only partially preserved but with
out mixture.
This seems on the whole to be what has happened in southern'
California, where the jimsonweed or "toloache" religion emanating
from the Gabrielino and the system of song-myth cycles issuing from
the Colorado river tribes existed side by side to only a limited extent
among the Diegueno and perhaps some of the Cahuilla and Serrano.
1922]
Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California
305
RITUAL CULTS
NORTH WESTERN ! Dances of Wee^ttn
~. <-..*• Limits
Wh'ite Da«rskin a.nd Jumping
^^ K^OWKI 1"o t>c. \A.cK*n0
CENTRAL*. Secret Society w.tU Kuksu Da.nc.es
^^=^ Probable lim'tta
Definitely reported
^v Known to be l^ckm^
I R Reported a.» a. rec.erit introduction
SOUTHERN 1 T.maonweed. [j"olo».c^e3 1 mtiation
. — Proba-ble limits
•» itelv re ported
ip-rea-d of Timaonwe«d x>&e
Tr&ditionaLl Spread of Cnon^icWnisK form
Known to be l
interpreta.t!on
COLORADO RIVER : Drea.nr,«d
Proba-bU I'.m'.t*
Definite^ r-«porte4
Cent
enera o
Map 3
306 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
Even in these cases of partial mixture it is possible that the con
dition is not ancient. A recent wave of propaganda for the jimson-
weed cult radiated southward and perhaps eastward from the Gabriel-
ino during mission times — may in fact have succeeded in then gaining
for the first time a foothold, particularly when Christian civilization
had sapped the strength of the older cults in regions where these had
previously been of sufficient vitality to keep out this toloache religion.
In any event there are certain ceremonies of wide distribution in
California which must be considered as belonging to a more general
ized and presumably older stratum of native civilization than any of
The four cults here referred to. Most prominent among these simpler
rituals is the adolescence ceremony for girls. The dance of war or
victory occupies second place. To this must be added in northwestern
and north central California the shamans' dance for instruction of
the novice, and in north and south central California various exhi
bitions by classes or bodies of shamans. Generally speaking, all these
rites are dw^arfed among each people in proportion as it adheres to
one of the four organized cults; but they rarely disappear wholly.
They are usually somewhat but rather lightly colored by ritualistic
ideas developed in the greater cults. Thus the adolescence rites of
the Hupa, the Maidu, and the Luiseno are by no means uniform.
And yet, with the partial exception of the latter, they have not been
very profoundly shaped by the cults with which they are in contact,
and can certainly not be described as having been incorporated in
these cults. In short, these old or presumably ancient rites — which
are all animated by essentially individual motives as opposed to
communal or world purposes — evince a surprising vitality which has
enabled them to retain certain salient traits during periods when
it may be supposed that the more highly florescent great religions
grew or were replaced by others.
The mourning anniversary belongs to neither class and is best
considered separately.
The Kuksu and toloache systems shared the idea of initiation into
-» a society. This organization was always communal. The aim nor
mally was to include all adult males, and even where some attempt
at discrimination was made, as perhaps among the Wintun, the pro
portion of those left out of membership seems to have been small.
Nowhere was there the institution of distinct but parallel or equiva
lent fraternal religious bodies. The organization of the society was
of very simple character, particularly in the south. In the Kuksu
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 307
society two grades of initiates were recognized, besides the old men
of special knowledge who acted as directors.
The Kuksu cult was the only one in California which directly
impersonated spirits and had developed a fair wealth of distinctive
paraphernalia and disguises for several mythic characters. This is *-'
a feature which probably grew up on the spot. It cannot well have
reached central California from either the Southwestern or the North
Pacific coast areas, since the intervening nations for long distances
do not organize themselves into societies; not to mention that the
quite diverse northwestern and toloache religions are present as evi
dences of growths that would have served to block the transmission of
such influences as disguises.
To compensate for the simplicity of organization in the Kuksu
and toloache religions, initiation looms up largely, according to some
reports almost as if it were the chief function of the bodies. Novices
were often given a formal and prolonged education. Witness the
woknam, the "lie-dance" or "school," of the Yuki; the orations of
the Maidu and Wintun; the long moral lectures to Luiseno boys
and girls. That these pedagogical inclinations are an inherent part
of the idea of the religious society, is shown by the fact that the
Yurok and Mohave, who lack societies, do not manifest these inclina
tions, at least not in any formal way. In the Southwest, education
is much less important than in California, relatively to the whole
scheme of the religious institution; and for the Plains the difference
is still greater. It appears that these two aspects, initiation and
organization, tend to stand in inverse ratio of importance in North
American cult societies.
Police and military functions of religious societies are very strongly
marked among the Plains tribes; are definitely exercised by the bow
or warrior societies of the Southwest ; and perhaps stand out larger
in native consciousness than in our own, since ethnologists have
often approached the religious bodies of the area from the side of
cult rather than social influence. But such functions are exceedingly
vague and feeble in California. There may have been some regula
tion of profane affairs by the body of initiates; but the chiefs and
other civil functionaries are the ones usually mentioned in such mat
ters in California. There certainly was no connection of the cult ^
societies with warfare. The first traces of a connection between war
and ritual appear on the Colorado river, where societies do not exist.
The negativeness of the California religious bodies in regard of police
308 University of California Publications in Am. Aroli. and Etlin. [Vol. 13
functions is to be construed as an expression of their lack of develop
ment of the organization factor.
In spite of their performance of communal and often public rituals,
\ American religious societies are never wholly divorced from shaman
ism, that is, the exercise of individual religious power, and one of
tfieir permanent foundations or roots must be sought in shamanism.
On the Plains, there is a complete transition from societies based on
voluntary affiliation, purchase, age, war record, or other non-religious
factors, to such as are clearly nothing but more or less fluctuating
groups of individuals endowed with similar shamanistic powers.
Farther east, the Midewiwin is little more than an attempt at formal
organization of shamanism. In the Southwest, among the Pueblos,
the fraternal as opposed to the communal religious bodies can be
looked upon, not indeed as shamans' associations, but as societies one
- of. whose avowed purposes — perhaps the primary one — is. curative,
and which have largely replaced the shaman acting as an individual.
Among the Navaho, the greatest ceremonies seem to be curative. In
California we have the similarity of name between the Luiseno shaman
and. initiates — pul-a and pu-pl-em; and the lit or doctoring of the
Yuki societies is practically their only function besides that of per
petuating themselves by initiation. In spite of their loose structure
and comparative poverty of ritual, it cannot however be maintained
that the societies of California are more inclined to be shamanistic
than those of the other two regions ; and they are less shamanistic in
character than the North Pacific coast societies.
Perhaps the most distinctive single trait of the two Californian
cult societies is their freedom from any tendency to break up into,
or to be accompanied by, smaller and equivalent but diverse societies
as in the Plains, Southwest, and North Pacific coast regions.
The cults of the Colorado river tribes are bare of any inclination
toward the formation of associations or bodies of members. They rest
on dreams, or on imitations of other practitioners which are fused
with inward experiences and construed as dreams. These dreams
invariably have a nrythological cast. Ritually the cults consist essen
tially of long series of songs ; but most singers know a corresponding
narrative. Dancing is minimal, and essentially an -adjunct for pleas
ure. Concretely expressed symbolism is scarcely known: disguises,
ground paintings, altars, religious edifices, drums or paraphernalia,
and costumes are all dispensed with.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 309
The northwestern cults adhere minutely to certain traditional
forms, but these forms per se have no meaning. There is no trace
of any cult organizations. The esoteric basis of every ceremony is
the recitation of a formula, which is a myth in dialogue. The formulas
are jealously guarded as private property. Major rites always serve
a generic communal or even world-renewing purpose, and may well
be described as new year rites. Dance costumes and equipments are /•
splendid but wholly unsymbolic. All performances are very rigor
ously attached to precise localities and spots.
It appears that as these four cults are followed from northwestern
California southeastward to the lower Colorado there is a successive
weakening of the dance and all other external forms, of physical
apparatus, of association with particular place or edifice; and an
increase of personal psychic participation, of symbolism and mysti
cism, of speculation or emotion about human life and death, and
of intrinsic interweaving of ritualistic expression with myth. The
development of these respective qualities has nothing to do with the
development of principles of organization, initiation, and imperson
ation or enactment; since the latter principles are adhered to in the
middle of our area and unknown at the extremities.
THE MOUENING ANNIVERSARY
The anniversary or annual ceremony in memory of the dead bulks
so large in the life of many California tribes as to produce a first
impression of being one of the most typical elements of Californian
culture. As a matter of fact, the institution was in force over only
about half of the state : southern California and the Sierra Nevada
region. There can be little doubt that its origin is southern. The
distribution itself so suggests. The greatest development of mourn
ing practices is found among the Gabrielino, Luiseno, and Diegueno.
It is not that their anniversary is much more elaborate than that of
other groups — the use of images representing the dead is common
to the great majority of tribes — but these southerners have a greater
number of mourning rites. Thus the Luiseno first wash the clothes
of the dead, then burn them, and finally make the image ceremony.
Of this they know two distinct forms, and in addition there are special
mourning rites for religious initiates, and the Eagle dance which is
also a funerary ceremony. Another circumstance that points to south
ern origin is the fact that the anniversary is held by nearly all tribes
310 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn.
in a circular brush enclosure, such as is not used by the Miwok and
Maidu for other purposes, whereas in southern California it is the
only and universal religious structure. Finally, there are no known
connections between the anniversary and the Kuksu cult of the
Miwok and Maidu, whereas the toloache religion of southern Califor
nia presents a number of contacts with the mourning ceremony.
It is a fair inference that the anniversary received its principal
development among the same people that chiefly shaped the toloache
cult, namely, the Gabrielino or some of their immediate neighbors.
It is even possible that the two sets of rites flowed northward in con
junction, and that the anniversary outreached its mate because the
absence or rarity of the jimsonweed plant north of the Yokuts checked
the invasion of the rites based specifically upon it.
The Mohave and Yuma follow an aberrant form of mourning
which is characteristic of their isolated cultural position. Their
ceremony is held in honor of distinguished individual warriors, not
for the memory of all the dead of the year. The mourners and
singers sit under a shade, in front of which young men engage in
mimic battle and war exploits. There are no images among the
Mohave and no brush enclosure. The shade is burned at the con
clusion, but there is no considerable destruction of property such as
is so important an element of the rite elsewhere in California.
An undoubted influence of the anniversary is to be recognized in
a practice shared by a numb'er of tribes just outside its sphere of dis
tribution: the Southern "Wintun, Porno, Yuki, Lassik, and perhaps
others. These groups burn a large amount of property for the dead
at the time of the funeral.
Some faint traces, not of the mourning anniversary itself indeed,
but rather of the point of view which it expresses, are found even
among the typical northwestern tribes. Among the Yurok and Hupa
custom has established a certain time and place in every major dance
— >4 as the occasion for an outburst of weeping. The old people in par
ticular remember the presence of their departed kinsmen at former
presentations of this part of the ceremony, and seem to express their
grief almost spontaneously.
On the question of the time of the commemoration, more infor
mation is needed. It appears rather more often not to fall on the
actual anniversary. Among some of the southern tribes it may be
deferred some years; with the Mohave it seems to be held within a
few weeks or months after death; the Sierra tribes mostly limit it
to a fixed season — early autumn.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 311
GIRLS' ADOLESCENCE CEREMONY
Probably every people in California observed some rite for girls
at the verge of womanhood: the vast majority celebrated it with a
dance of some duration. The endless fluctuations in the conduct of
the ceremony are indicated in table 1. It appears that in spite of a
general basic similarity of the rite, and the comparatively narrow
scope imposed on its main outlines by the physiological event to which
it has reference, there are very few features that are universal. These
few, among which the use of a head scratcher and the abstention from
flesh are prominent, are of a specifically magical nature. The wealth
of particular features restricted to single nations, and therefore evi
dently developed by them, is rather remarkable, and argues that the
native Calif ornians were not so much deficient in imagination and
originalit}' as in the ability to develop these qualities with emotional
intensity to the point of impressiveness. There is every reason to
believe that this inference applies with equal force to most phases
of Californian civilization. It merely happens that an unusually full
series of details is available for comparison on the rite for girls.
Poor and rude tribes make much more of the adolescence ceremony
than those possessed of considerable substance and of institutions of
some specialization. In this connection it is only necessary to cite
the Yurok as contrasted with the Sinkyone, the Porno as against the
Yuki, the valley Maidu against those of the mountains, the Yokuts
against the Washo, the Mohave against the Diegueno. Precedence in
general elaboration of culture must in every instance be given to
the former people of each pair: and yet it is the second that makes,
and the first that does not make, a public adolescence dance. This
condition warrants the inference that the puberty rite belongs to the
generic or basic stratum of native culture, and that it has decayed
among those nations that succeeded in definitely evolving or estab
lishing ceremonials whose associations are less intimately personal and
of a more broadly dignified import.
In the northern half of the state the idea is deeprooted that the
potential influence for evil of a girl at the acme of her adolescence is
very great. Even her sight blasts, and she is therefore covered or
concealed as much as possible. Everything malignant in what is
specifically female in physiology is thought to be thoroughly intensi
fied at its first appearance. So far as known, all the languages of this
portion of California possess one word for a woman in her periodic
312
University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
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1922] Krocber: Elements of Culture in Native California 313
illness; and an entirel}' distinct term for a girl who is at the precise
incipiency of womanhood.
A second concept is also magical: that the girl's Behavior at this
period of intensification is extremely critical for her nature and
conduct forever after. Hence the innumerable prescriptions for
gathering firewood, industry, modest deportment, and the like.
This concept pervades also the reasoning of the tribes in the
southern end of the state, but is rather overshadowed there by a more
special conviction that direct physiological treatment is necessary to
ensure future health. Warmth appears to be considered the first
requisite in the south. Cold water must not be drunk under any
circumstances, bathing must be in heated water; and in the sphere
of Gabrielino-Luiseno influence, the girl is cooked or roasted, as it
were, in a pit, which is clearly modeled on the earth oven. The idea
of her essential malignancy is by comparison weak.
The southern concepts have penetrated in diluted form into the
San Joaquin valley region, along with so many other elements of
culture. On the other hand the Mohave, and with them presumably
the Yuma, practice a type of ceremony that at most points differs
from that of the other southern Californians, and provides an excellent
exemplification of the considerable aloofness of the civilization of these
agricultural tribes of the Colorado river.
The deer-hoof rattle is consciously associated with the girls' cere
mony over all northern California. Since there is a deep-seated anti
thesis of taboo between everything sexual on the one hand, and every
thing referring to the hunt, the deer as the distinctive game animal,
and flesh on the other, the use of this particular rattle can hardly be
a meaningless accident. But the basis of the inverting association
has not become clear, and no native explanations seem to have been
recorded.
A few Athabascan tribes replace the deer-hoof rattle by a special
form of the cjap slick which provides the general dance accompani
ment throughout central California, but which is not otherwise used
in the northwestern habitat. In southern California the deer-hoof
rattle is known, but is employed by hunters among the Luiseno, by
mourners among the Yumans.
The scarcity of the ritualistic number four in table 1 may be an
accident of tribal representation in the available data, but gives the
impression of having some foundation in actuality and therefore a
historical significance.
314 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [\ ol. 13
BOYS' INITIATIONS
The description which has sometimes been made of Californian
religion as characterized by initiation and mourning rites is not
wholly accurate. Mourning customs, so far as they are crystallized
into formal and important ceremonies, are confined to a single wave
of southern origin and definitely limited distribution — the mourning
anniversary. The girls' adolescence rite on the other hand is univer
sal, and clearly one of the ancient constituents of the religion of all
California as well as considerable tracts outside.
Boys were initiated into the two great organized religions of the
state, the Kuksu and the toloache cult. Important as the initiation
ceremonies were in these cults, it would however be misleading to
regard them as primary : the cult has logical precedence, the initiation
is a part of it. When therefore we subtract these two religions, there
is left almost nothing in the nature of initiation for boys parallel to
the girls' adolescence ceremony.
The only clear instance is in the northeastern corner of the state
among the Achomawi and Shasta, primarily the former. These people
practice an adolescence rite for boys comparable to the more wide
spread one for girls. Among each of them a characteristic feature
is the whipping of the boy with a bow string. The Achomawi also
pierce the boy's ears and make him fast, besides which he performs
practices very similar to the deliberate seeking after supernatural
power indulged in by the tribes of the Plains. The entire affair is
very clearly an adolescence rather than an initiation rite, an induc
tion into a status of life, and not into an organized group. It may
be looked upon as a local extension to boys of concepts that are uni
versal in regard to girls.
In southern California there is sometimes a partial assimilation
' of the boys ' toloache initiation and of the girls ' adolescence ceremony.
Thus the Luiseno construct ground paintings for both, deliver anal
ogous orations of advice to both, and put both sexes under similar
restrictions. The Kawaiisu are said to give toloache to both boys
and girls.
But these local and incomplete developments are very far from
equating the initiations for the two sexes ; and neither balances with
mourning ceremonies. The girls ' adolescence, the boys ' initiation into
a society, and the mourning anniversary clearly have distinct origins
so far as California is concerned, and represent cultural planes.
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 315
NEW YEAR OBSERVANCES
A first -salmon ccremonj' was shared by an array of tribes in north
ern California. The central act was usually the catching and eating
of the first salmon of the season ; after which fishing was open to all.
These features make the ceremony one of public magic. The tribes
from which a ritual of this kind has been reported are the Tolowa,
Yurok, Hupa, Karok, Shasta, Achomawi, and northern mountain
Maidu. The list is probably not complete ; but it may be significant
that all the groups included in it are situated in the extreme north
of the state, whereas salmon run in abundance as far south as San
Francisco bay. It thus seems possible that the distribution of the rite
was limited not by the occurrence of the fish but by purely cultural
associations. Its range, for example, is substantially identical witht
that of the northern type of overlaid basketry.
The first-salmon ceremony is clearly a ritual of the new year's
type, but is the only widely spread instance of this kind yet found in
California. The idea of ceremonial reference to the opening of the
year or season seems not to have been wholly wanting in north and
central California, especially where the Kuksu religion followed a
calendar ; but there is no record of this idea having been worked out
into a definite ritual concept. In the narrower northwest, it is true,
there were first-acorn and world-renewing ceremonies as well as the
first-salmon rite, and among the Karok the super-added feature of
new-fire making; all with associated dances. This, however, is an
essentially local development among the small group of tribes who
have advanced the northwestern culture to its most intense status.
In other words, an annual salmon producing or propitiating act
of magical nature and of public rather than individual reference is
usual in the northern part of the state and is therefore presumably
an ancient institution. Among the specifically northwestern tribes
this act has become associated with a ritualistic spectacle, the Deer
skin or the Jumping dance, which probably had no original connec
tion with the magical performance; after which the combination of
magic act and dance has been applied, within the same narrow
region, to other occasions of a first fruits or new year's character.
316 University of California Publications in Am.< Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
OFFERINGS
Offerings of feather wands are reported from the Chumash, the
Costaiioans, and the Maidu, and may therefore be assumed to have
had a considerably wider distribution. The idea is that of the feather
stick or prayer plume of the Southwest, and there is probably a his
torical connection between the practices of the two regions; although
this connection may be psychological, that is indirectly cultural,
rather than due to outright transmission. This inference is supported
by the fact that there is no reference to anything like the offering
^ of feather wands in southern California proper. In fact the practice
of setting out offerings of any kind is so sparsely mentioned for
-•southern California that it must be concluded to have been but
slightly developed. The Californian feather wand was of somewhat
different shape from the Southwestern feather stick. It appears
usually to have been a stick of some length from which single feathers
or at most small groups of feathers were hung at one or two places.
-* The northwestern tribes are free from the practice.
Another ultimate connection with the Southwest is found in offer
ings or sprinklings of meal. These have been recorded for the Porno,
the Maidu, the Costanoans, and the Serrano. In some instances it
is not clear whether whole seeds or flour ground from them was used,
and it is even possible that the meal was sometimes replaced by entire
acorns. The southern California tribes should perhaps be included,
since the use of meal or seeds in the ground painting might be con
strued as an offering. The custom seems, however, to have been
more or less hesitating wherever it has been reported. It certainly
lacks the full symbolic implications and the ritualistic vigor which
mark it in the Southwest. Among the Yqkuts and probably their
mountain neighbors, offerings of eagle down appear to have been
more characteristic than those of seeds or meal. The northwestern
tribes can be set down as not participating in the custom of meal
J offerings. They blew tobacco, or dropped incense on the fire.
THE GHOST DANCE
The ghost dance which swept northern California with some
vehemence from about 1870 to 1872 is of interest because of its
undoubted connection with the much more extensive and better known
wave of religious excitement that penetrated to the Indians of half
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 317
of the United States about 1889, and which left most of the Califor-
nians untouched. Both movements had their origin among the North- ^
ern Paiute of Nevada, and from individuals in the same family. The
author of the early prophecies may have been the father, and was at
any rate an older kinsman, of "\Voypka or Jack Wilson, the later
messiah. The ideas of the two movements and their ritual were
substantially identical. There is thus little doubt that even their songs
were similar, although unfortunately these were not recorded for the
earlier movement until after its fusion with other cults.
The question arises why the religious infection which originated
twice in the same spot in an interval of fifteen or twenty years should
at the first occasion have obtained a powerful foothold in northern
California alone, and on its recrudescence should have penetrated to
the Canadian boundary and the Mississippi river. That the Califor-
nians remained passive toward the second wave is intelligible on the
ground of immunity acquired by having passed through the first.
But that a religion which showed its inherent potentiality by spread
ing to wholly foreign tribes should in 1870 have been unable to make
any eastward progress and in 1890 sweep like wildfire more than a t
thousand miles to the east, is remarkable. The explanation seems
to be that the bulk of the Indian tribes in the United States in 1870 1
had not been reduced to the necessary condition of cultural decay for !
a revivalistic influence to impress them. In other words, the native
civilization of northern California appears to have suffered as great
a disintegration by 1870, twenty or twenty-five years after its first
serious contact with the whites, as the average tribe of the central
United States had undergone by 1890, or from fifty years to a century I
after similar contact began. As regards the Plains tribes, among
whom the second ghost dance reached its culmination, the same influ
ence on the breaking up of their old life may be ascribed to the destruc
tion of the buffalo as the sudden overwhelming swamping of the Cali
fornia natives by the gold seekers. In each case an interval of from
ten to twenty years elapsed from the dealing of the substantial death
blow to the native civilization until the realization of the change was
sufficiently profound to provide a fruitful soil for a doctrine of
restoration.
Individual tribes had of course been subject to quite various for
tunes at the hands of the whites when either ghost dance reached them.
But it is also known that they accorded the movement many locally
diverse receptions. Some threw themselves into it with an almost
318 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
unlimited enthusiasm of hope; others were only slightly touched or
remained aloof. This is very clear from Mooney's classical account
of the greater ghost dance, and it can be conjectured that an intensive
study would reveal the skeptical or negative tribes to have been so
situated that their old life did not yet appear to themselves as irre
vocably gone, or as so thoroughly subject to the influences of Cau
casian civilization that they had accepted the change as final. Then,
too, it must be remembered that the wave, as it spread, developed a
certain psychological momentum of its own, so that tribes which, if
left to themselves or restricted to direct intercourse with the origina
tors of the movement, might have remained passive, were infected
by the frenzy of differently circumstanced tribes with whom they
were in affiliation.
Similar phenomena can be traced in the history of the California
ghost dance, imperfect as our information concerning it is. The
Karok and Tolowa seem to have thrown themselves into the cult with
A greater abandonment than the Yurok. The Hupa, at least to all
intents, refused to participate. This is perhaps to be ascribed to the
fact that they were the only tribe in the region leading a stable and
regulated reservation life. But it is not clear whether this circum
stance had already led them to a conscious though reluctant acceptance
of the new order of things, or whether some other specific cause must
be sought.
On many of the northermost tribes the effect of the ghost dance
was transient, and left no traces whatever. It was perhaps already
\ decadent when the Modoc war broke out. At any rate it is no longer
heard of after the termination of that conflict. How far the Modoc
war may have been indirectly fanned by the doctrine, remains to be
ascertained. Its immediate occasion seems not to have been religious.
Somewhat farther south, the ghost dance took firmer root among
tribes like the Porno and Southern Wintun, who were beyond the
most northerly missions but who had been more or less under mission
influence and had also been partly invaded by Mexicans in the period
between the secularization and the Americanization of California.
The old^Kuksu ceremonies were now not only revived but made over.
A new type of songs, paraphernalia, and ritual actions came into
existence; and these have maintained themselves in some measure
until today — more strongly than the aboriginal form of religion. The
Wintun at least, and presumably the Porno also, are still conscious,
however, of the two elements in their present cults, and distinguish
1922] Kroebcr: Elements of Culture in Native California 319
them by name. $altu are the spirits that instituted the ancient rites,
boli those with whom the modern dances are associated.
This amalgamation, strangely enough, resulted in the carrying of
the Kuksu religion, at a time when it was essentially moribund, to
tribes which in the days of its vitality had not come under its influ
ence. Evidently the ghost dance element acted as a penetrating sol
vent and carrier. The Central Wintun took the mixed cult over from
the Southern Wintun, and the use since 1872 of typical Kuksu para
phernalia as far north as the Shasta of Shasta valley evidences the
extent of this movement.
None of the tribes within the mission area seems to have been in
the least affected by the ghost dance. This is probably* not due to
their being Catholics or nominal Catholics, but rather to the fact
that their life had long since been definitely made over. Groups like
the Yokuts, of whom only portions had been missionized, and these
rather superficially, also did not take up the ghost dance. The cause
in their instance presumably lay between their geographical remote
ness and the fact that most of their intercourse was with missionized
tribes.
The Modoc were probably the first California people to receive the \
early ghost dance from the Northern Paiute (map 4). It is hard to
conceive that the Achomawi should have been exempt, but unfor
tunately there appear to be no records concerning them on this
point. The same may be said of the mountain Maidu. From the
Modoc, at any rate, the cult was carried to the Shasta. These trans
mitted it still farther down the Klamath to the Karok. From there
it leaped the Siskiyou mountains to the Tolowa, from whom the lower
Yurok of the river and of the coast took their beliefs. The upper
Yurok were less affected and the Hupa scarcely at all. Here we lose
track of the spread of the dance. Probably all the Athabascan tribes
between the Whilkut and the Wailaki, at least those that survived in
sufficient numbers, came under ghost dance influence, but the direc
tion in which this influence progressed is not certain. It is more
likely, however, to have been from the south northward, since the
dance appears to have been associated with the erection of large round
dance houses of central Californian type. This indicates an approxi
mate Porno or Southern Wintun source. It has already been men
tioned how in the Sacramento valley the ghost dance spread from .
south to north. To this is may be added that the Yana received the
cult from the valley Maidu to the south of them. The question then
320 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
arises how the dance reached the Porno and Southern Wintun. There
is no known information on this point. It may have traveled directly
westward from the northern Paiute through the Washo and Southern
Maidu. On the other hand, the entry into California may have been
at a single point: that is, through the Modoc and Klamath river
tribes, from whom the cult spread southward until, reaching its
extreme limit among the Southern Wintun, it recrystallized and then
flowed back northward. Inquiry among the Southern Maidu and
Northern Miwok would probably determine this issue.
It is not known whether any of the Miwok took up the ghost dance.
In a number of localities they have during the last generation or so
erected circular or octagonal dance houses of wood and without earth
covering. These look very much like ghost dance modifications of
the old semi-subterranean dance house of the Kuksu cults. About
fifty years ago, that is, at or near the time of the ghost dance, the hill
Miwok received a number of dances, including some of the Kuksu
series, that were new to them. These came from Costanoan territory
to the west, but probably represent not so much a persistence of
ancient Costanoan ritual as a cult revival among the less thoroughly
missionized northern Valley Yokuts or possibly Plains Miwok domi
ciled at the Costanoan missions, who were original neighbors of the
hill Miwok.
The 1890 ghost dance is reported by Mooney, specifically or by
implication, for the Achomawi, Washo, Mono, Panamint, Yokuts of
Tule river, Luiseno or other "Mission" groups, Chemehuevi, and
Mohave. The Washo, Eastern Mono, Chemehuevi, and perhaps Pana
mint could hardly have escaped participation. The Achomawi may
x have been rendered susceptible by a failure to take part in 1872.
The Mohave were never seriously affected. The Yokuts and Luiseno
were no doubt interested, but seem never to have practiced the cult.
No tribe in California retained for more than a very short time any
phase of this second ghost dance religion.
CALENDAR
The California Indian did not record the passage of long intervals
of time. No one knew his own age nor how remote an event was that
had happened more than half a dozen years ago. Tallies seem not
to have been kept, and no sticks notched annually have been reported.
Most groups had not even a word for "year," but employed "world,"
"summer," or "winter" instead. Where there appear to be words
meaning "year," they seem to denote "season," that is, a half-year.
1922]
Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California
321
GHOST DANCES
«— Course of Cult *f 1869-73
1890 Tribe* Affected by Cult of 1889-92
X -S ource Of Both Cults
Map 4
322 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
Probably every tribe, however, had a system of measuring time
within the year. This was by the universally known method of
naming and reckoning lunations within the round of the seasons.
The point of interest in this method to the historian of culture rests
in the means taken to adjust the eternally varying and essentially
irreconcilable lunar and solar phenomena. Half a dozen such calen
dars are known from California. These clearly belong to three types.
The Maidu, or rather some of them, kne_w twelve moons, named
after seasonal occurrences. The series began in spring, and appears
not to have been controlled by any solar phenomenon. There can
accordingly scarcely have been a consistent method, however rude, of
adjusting the moon count to the year. When the discrepancy became
too insistent, something was presumably stretched or the reckoning
simply suspended until matters tallied again. The whole scheme is
essentially descriptive of terrestrial events, and has as little reference
to astronomical events as a system can have and still be called a
calendar. In line with this attitude of the Maidu is the fact that they
made definite recognition of the seasons as such, as shown by a neat
nomenclature. It should also be added that some of the upland Maidu
counted only the winter moons, those of the summer being left
unnamed.
The few other central Californian calendars known do not differ
in plan from those of the Maidu.
The Yiwok calendar had a more astronomical basis, although
simple enough ; and the descriptive element was almost lacking. The
moons were numbered, not named, at least up to the tenth ; the
remaining ones had descriptive appellations. The year began defi
nitely at the winter solstice. The summer solstice may have been
noted also, but did not enter into the system. There was a clear
recognition of the essential problem of a year calendar, some indi
viduals counting twelve moons and others thirteen. The solution
must have been less clearly formulated, since it is stated that disputes
often took place as to the proper designation of the current moon.
Yet the recognition of the solstice as a primary point, however inaccu
rately it may have been determined by offhand appearances without
mechanically aided observations, would prevent any excessively gross
errors or long continued conflict of opinion.
The Yurok system is undoubtedly connected with that of the
North Pacific coast, where the moons are also frequently numbered
and fitted into the frame afforded by the solstices.
Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 323
The Modoc calendar seems to be a weakening of the Yurok one.
Basically, the moons are numbered, although their actual names are
those of the fingers of the hand. But the beginning of the round is
in summer and is determined by a seasonal harvest ; there is no men
tion of the solstices ; and none of an intercalary thirteenth month.
In southern California, the moon, names are probably descriptive.,
but the fixed points of the calendar, and the means of its more or less
automatic correction, are the two solstices. The Diegueiio have only
six month names ; which means that the second year-half repeats and
balances the first, and presumably that the two solstices are pivotal.
The Juaneilo and Luiseno do not repeat month designations within
the year, but the former name only five and the latter but four luna
tions in each year-half. This scheme makes the non-lunar periods
that include the solstices long and somewhat variable, but also accent
uates them as primary. All three varieties of this calendar must at
times have been productive of difficulty within the year-half, but as
a perpetual system the scheme is obviously self-correcting. Whether
any of the southern California tribes took actual observations of the
solstices is not known.
This southern calendar is clearly allied to that of the tribes of the
southwestern states, who also deal in solstices but describe their moons.
The Diegueiio six-name plan is that of the Zuni. The Pueblos defi
nitely determined the solstices with fair accuracy by observations
made on the horizon from established spots. It is possible that they
were led to this procedure by their permanent residences. These
would at least afford an advantage and perhaps a stimulus in this
direction.
Astronomical knowledge not directly used in time reckoning was
slight in northern and central California. The planets were too
difficult to trouble with, except for Venus when it was the morning
star. The Pleiades are the constellation most frequently mentioned,
and seem toliave had a designation among every tribe. Myths usually
make them dancing girls, as in so many parts of the world. This
may prove to be one of the concepts of independent or directly psycho
logical origin which have so often been sought but are so difficult to
establish positively. Orion's belt is probably recognized with the next
greatest frequency, and then possibly Ursa Major. There are some
references to Polaris as the immovable star. The Milky Way is known
everywhere, and quite generally called the ghosts' road. In southern
324 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Ethn. [Vol. 13
California stellar symbolism begins to be of some consequence, and a
half-dozen constellations are named in addition to those recognized
farther north. They are mostly those of the southern summer sky.
NUMERATION
The round numbers familiar to the Californians in ritual and myth
are low, as among all American Indians. In the north, from the
Tolowa and Sinkyone to the Achomawi and mountain Maidu, five or.
its multiple ten is in universal use in such connections. (Table 2.)
In the region of the well defined Kuksu cult, four takes its place,
although the Porno evince some inclination to supplement it by six. To
the south, there is enough uncertainty to suggest that no one number
stood strongly in the foreground. The Yokuts favor six, but without
much emphasis. The Gabrielino employed _fiy^r. six, and seven in
addition to .four ; among the Juaneiio, five is most commonly men
tioned; for theljuiseno, probably three; among the Diegueno, three
is clearly prevalent in ritual action, four in myth. For a group of
American nations with a definite ceremonial cult, and that compris
ing sacred paintings of the world, this is an unusually vague con
dition. Only the Colorado river tribes are positive: four is as inevi
tably significant to them as to all the Indians of the Southwest.
Directional reference of the ritualistic number is manifest in the
Kuksu tribes, but everywhere else is wanting or at least insignificant,
except with the Yuman groups. Here there is some tendency to
balance opposite directions; single pairs are even mentioned alone.
North or east has the precedence. In the Kuksu region, there is a
definite sequence of directions in sinistral circuit; but the starting
point varies from tribe to tribe. Association of colors with the direc
tions has been reported only from the Diegueno. Its general absence
is an instance of the comparatively low development of ritualistic
symbolism in California.
The same table (2) shows also the distribution in California of
methods of counting — the basis of all mathematical science. Mankind
as a whole, even when most advanced, counts as its fingers determine.
But it is obvious that the unit or basis of numeration can be one
hand, or two, or the fingers plus the toes, that is "one man." This
gives a choice between quinary, decimal, and vigesimal systems.
Whether from an inherent cause or because of a historical accident,
practically all highly civilized nations count by tens, with hundred
1922]
Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California
325
Group
TABLE 2
RITUAL NUMBERS AND METHODS OF NUMERATION
Ritual Number
Yurok
5, 10
Wiyot
5, 10
Karok
5, 10
Chimariko
Tolowa
Hupa, Chilula
5, 10
Sinkyone
5
Wailaki
Kato
Coast Yuki
Yuki
4* (6)
Wappo
Porno
4* (6*)
Coast Miwok
Shasta
5, 10
Modoc
5
Achomawi
(5)
Yana
(5)
Wintun, Northern
Wintun, Central
Wintun, Southern
4*
Maidu, Mountain
5*
Maidu, Hill
4 5
Maidu, Valley
4* (5)
Maidu, Southern
Miwok, Northern
Miwok, Central
4
Miwok, Southern
Yokuts, Central
6
Yokuts, Southerly 3
6, 12
,Costanoan
(5)
Esselen
Salinan
Chumash
Washo
Eastern'Mono
4
Tiibatulabal
Chemehuevi
Serrano
Gabrielino
4, 8 (10) 6
Cahuilla
Luisefio (3)
(4)*
Diegueno 3
4*
Yuma
Mohave
4*
(7)
Units of Count
1-10
11-19
20-
10
10
10
10
10
10
5
10
10
5
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
5
10
5
10
5
5
10
5
5
10
8
8
64
5
10
10
51
52
10,20
10
10
10
5
10
10
5
10
10
5
10
10
5
10
10
5
10
5
5
5
5, 10
20, 10
5
10
10
5
5, 10
20, 10
5
5
20
5
5
10
10
5
20
10
5
20
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
103
10
10
5
4
16
16
4
16
16
5
10
10
10
10
10
1
5
10
10
5
5
5
5
10
10
5
5
5
5
10
5
10
10
5
10
10
* Referred to cardinal directions.
1 10 among Northeastern Porno.
2 10 among Northeastern and Southern Porno.
3 5 among Southern Costanoans.
326 University of California Publications in Am. Arch, and Etlm. [Vol. 13
as the next higher unit. Peoples less advanced in culture are however
fairly equally divided between a decimal numeration and one which
operates somewhat more concretely or personally with fives and
twenties. So too with the Californians. But to judge correctly their
inclinations as between these two possibilities, it is necessary to dis
tinguish between their use of low and high numbers.
For the first ten numerals, the majority of the Californians have
stem£j}n2yjqr._one tojfive. The words for six to nine are formed from
those for one to four. This system is replaced by a truly decimal
one, in which the word for seven, for instance, bears no relation to
that for two, chiefly in three regions. The first of these regions holds
the two Algonkin divisions of California, the Wiyot and Yurok; and
a few immediately adjacent Athabascan groups, notably the Hupa
and Tolowa. The second area comprises the Yokuts, Miwok, and most
of the Costanoans — in short, the southern half of the Penutian family.
In the third area are the Plateau Shoshoneans east of the Sierra
Nevada.
These distributions reflect geographical positions rather than lin
guistic affinities. The northern Penutians, southern Athabascans, and
southern California Shoshoneans count by fives. The map makes it
look as if decimal numeration had been taken over by the Hupa and
Tolowa in imitation of the method of their Algonkin neighbors; but
the difficulty in this connection is that the great mass of eastern
Algonkins count by fives instead of straight to ten.
For the higher numbers, the corresponding choice is between a
system based on twenty and four hundred, or on ten and one hundred.
In this domain the decimal system prevails, showing that the quinary
and vigesimal methods, even if inherently associated, are not insep
arable. The situation may be summed up by saying that from twenty
up, all California counts decimally except the people of two areas.
The first comprises half or more of the Porno, most of the southern
Wintun, in general the western Maidu, and the northerly divisions
of the interior Miwok. This is precisely the region of intensive devel
opment of the Kuksu cults. Here the count is by twenties. The
second area (although in this the count is, strictly speaking, by a
multiplication of fives rather than by twenties) is that of the Gabriel-
mo and Luiseiio, with whom the Fernandeno, Juaneiio, and perhaps
Cupeno must be included, but no others. Now this, strangely enough,
is precisely the tract over which the Chungichnish form of the jimson-
weed religion had penetrated in its full form. The connection between
1922] Kroeber: Elements of Culture in Native California 327
a system of religious institutions and a method of numeration in daily
life is difficult to understand, and the bonds must be indirect and
subtle. That they exist, however, and that it is more than an empty
coincidence that we are envisaging, is made almost indisputable by
the fact that the northern tract of decimal counting for low numbers
coincides very nearly with the area of the northwestern culture in its
purest form as exemplified by new year rites and the Deerskin dance.
That the basing of the vigesimal on a quinary count, although
usual, is by no means necessarj', is also shown by the Northern and
Central Miwok, who count the first ten numbers decimally, but pro
ceed from ten to twenty by adding units of five, and beyond with
units of twenty. That a people should count first five and then
another five and then proceed to operate systematically with the
higher unit of ten, is not so very foreign to our way of thinking. But
that our own psychic processes are by no means necessarily binding
is proved by this curious Miwok practice of counting successively by
tens, fives, and twenties.
Two other, totall}' divergent methods of counting are found in
California. The Chumash and Salinans count by fours, with sixteen
as higher unit, the Yuki by eights and sixty-fours. The latter operate
by laying pairs of twrigs into the spaces between the fingers. Thus
the anomaly is presented of an octonary system based on the hand.
The Yuki operate quite skilfully by this method : when they are asked
to count on the fingers as such, like their neighbors, they work slowly
and with frequent errors. Both these aberrant systems run contrary
to speech affinity : the Chumash and Salinans are the only Hokans
that count by fours; and the Coast Yuki, Huchnom, and Wappo
related to the Yuki know nothing of the system of eights.
Every count that can progress beyond one hand involves arith-
l metical operations of some sort, usually addition. But other processes
crop out with fair frequency in California. Nine, fourteen, and
nineteen are sometimes formed from the unit next above. The word
for four is often a reduplicated or expanded two; or eight a similar
formation from four. Two-three for six, three-four for twelve, and
three-five for fifteen all occur here and there ; and the Luiseiio count
by an indefinitely repeated system of multiplication, as, "four times
five times five."
The degree to which mathematical operations were conducted,
other than in the counts themselves, has been very little examined.
The Porno speak of beads by ten and forty thousands. Every group
328 University of California Publications in Am. Aroli. and Ethn. [Vol. 13
in the state, apparently, knew how to count into the hundreds; how
often its members actually used these higher numbers, and on what
occasions, is less clear. Rapid and extended enumeration argues some
sense of the value of numbers, and it is likely that people like the
Porno and Wintun developed such a faculty by their counting of
beads. Of direct mathematical operations there is less evidence. An
untutored Yuki can express offhand in his octonary nomenclature
how many fingers he has ; he evidently cannot multiply ten by two :
for he finds it necessary to count his hands twice over to enable him
to answer. An old Mohave knows at once that four times four is
sixteen; but four times eight presents a problem to be solved only
by a sorting and adding up of counters. No Californian language is
known to have any expression for fractions. There is always a word
for half, but it seems to mean part or division rather than the exact
mathematical ratio.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS— (Continued)
3. Porno Indian Basketry, by S. A, Barrett. Pp. 133-306, plates 15-30, 231
text figures. December, 1908 i L. 1.75
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Roland B. Dixon. Pp. 1-235. February, 1910 ._. . 2J>0
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November, 1910 ,.-. . ... . . — »36
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Kroeber. Pp. 1-12. May, 1911 ,. ._...._ .10
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man. Pp. 13-44, plates 1-5. November, 1911 -i._ _ .40
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plates 6-20. November, 1911 . : .-_ . .65
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Vol. 11. 1. Elements of the Kato Language, by Pliny Earle Goddard. Pp. 1-176, plates
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